㊢
Music and Religion
I got up this morning, turned on my computer, and there was my learned friend, "C", and we had an interesting conversation. As we got towards the end, I thought "hey - I should just stick this in the blog!". C was hesitant, but here it is, edited up a bit and ready for your reactions... It's like pressing record without people realising - pure talking....
M:
Morning
C:
Morning!
C:
recovered now? [from yesterday's hangover]
M: I guess. I had intense dreams, which I am still kinda reeling from...
C:
Yow. Positive, negative or just weird?
M: Intensely meaningful. Stuff about music and religion and fear of imminent destruction and the weakness of the 'intellectual' stance with music.
C:
interesting!
M:
Music as control.
I'm gonna try blogging it.
C: feel free to sounding-board via this medium...
M: The church downstairs was reaching a crescendo, jungle beats hitting a fever pitch, samples from everything anybody could possibly like, the evangelist getting more and more animated, the floor shaking.
I'm in my room wanting to counteract its power [by playing some loud music of my own] but it's raining so hard there's water coming down the walls and I'm hesitating to turn on my speakers
C:
jings!
M:
before I can do anything, the final contrasting resolution (actually some Orbital track) kicks in with 'everything's fine' sounds and I burst into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing...
When I go down and they're getting in their cars, I'm talking to the preacher about my music - hesitant, not feeling worthy:
"I'm trying to get to the ATOM of things, you know? I want my music to run RIGHT THROUGH."
"..."
"Do you see?"
But I realise that I have no message, no fanatical evangelical desires. The religious music cuts deep with the people in that parish, but I know it isn't real. But I don't have an alternative.
C: depends what you mean by 'isn't real'
M: Jesus isn't real.
God isn't real.
C:
But the music was!
M: Its power came from its message
C: What if the kingdom of heaven is within?
M:
That's not what christianity preaches.
C: It is in some versions!
M: All religions tap into some illusion of control
C: But you saw this all as people being duped and controlled?
M: I saw it as a tragedy of my having no religion to help me. As my lacking that basic need to 'understand', or to have any viable, expressable alternative that could ever hope to come up to the power of religions preaching with all their promises.
C:
But in the absence of an actual God, surely what such music/performance would be drawing on would be the capacity for people to lose themselves in the moment
M: Religion isn't about losing yourself in the moment. It's about FINDING yourself in the moment.
C: Surely at its best, faith is about it being ok to feel alright with yourself -- of finding some way of believing everything's ok; you are loved, etc
M:
How often is religion 'at its best'? How often does religion work without condemning those that oppose it?
'Everybody except us is going to hell' ...
'we will try to save them'
C: Scientifically, ontologically, historically, and so on it may be fiction, but I'm not certain there might not be some TRUTH in there... about there actually being something GOOD in the world. I'm as opposed to the exclusive, vengeful aspects of religion as you, but that's not what I'm saying may be defensible
M:
Of course, but without those fictions the message has no immediate power or relevance to most people
C: I don't know... maybe the feeling of being blessed, of being strong enough to cope, etc comes before the attempt to explain it in theological terms or to cash it out in supernatural doctrine and that's only one possible route among many (at least some of which don't involve hokum and lies).
M:
I just think, if I don't have a 'message', then how can my music ever get below the surface? It's easy to show how things are BROKEN with music. It's a lot more difficult to offer a positive solution, without resorting to religion, or religion-like things. If I want my music to have a religious power, rather than being of mere intellectual interest, I need some responsible ...faith? .. to convey...
C: Naaah, I disagree [about the need to resort to religion to convey a positive message]. Musical depictions of the brokenness and fuctness of things can quite easily be seen as attempts to express the beautiful tragedy of existence, making it aesthetic without removing the essential banality and stupidity of things
M:
How many people are willing to accept "the essential banality and stupidity of things" though?
C:
Everyone who watches TV?
[pause]
OK, to set up an arbitrary distinction: on the one hand you have full-on religious music; on the other plastic manufactured pop. Both forms of escapism.
M: I don't see religion as escapism - more a way of merging with the chaos in a productive way... but go on...
C: Then there's also stuff that's interesting in its own right -- intellectually and emotionally. It's not selling a dream or a lifestyle; it's asking you to attend to things as they are. Art/music/literature that doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths about how we're dirty, stupid animals, but also that luckily we are capable of kindness and love from time to time.
M: Thing is, the music in my dream was not powerful because of the actual music, which was, from my normal standpoint, rather generic. It was the context that made it affect my emotions exponentially more powerfully
C:
I see, so you were particularly annoyed by its success because it was artistically bankrupt
M:
I wasn't annoyed at its success. I was enveloped by it.
I started to question everything I believed.
C: How would you compare its effect on you with the effect it was having on the congregation?
M: Its effect on the congregation was the reason that it affected me so much I think. All those people listening, feeling it, using it to be together. Unaware of the parasites that came attached. But all my distrust of religion evaporated, became irrelevant, when it hit that final conclusion bit.
It was a positive ENOUGH message, and just impossible and pointless to fight with
C: What if the crowd thing and the euphoric climax was the point, rather than the religion thing? If at least part of religion's success through the ages has been humans engineering such situations -- but then perhaps explaining them in terms we'd now want to ditch? (The risk being that we throw the baby out with the bathwater)
M: The climax wouldn't have been euphoric if it wasn't for its religious message.
Now we have lots of people reaching similar experiences through clubbing and ecstacy...
C: I'm not sure -- I suspect it's more likely to be the euphoria that sustains the religion rather than the other way round. Which is more likely to hook someone in: some hokey ideas about the afterlife, or having a bloody amazing night out?
M: Well yes, of course its that euphoria that sustains the religion! The spectacle, the togetherness... The [specific] religion is pretty-much arbitrary, but the religious investment is symbiotic with the potential for the euphoria.
C: I agree.
The clubbing comparison's crucial. Isn't that yawning emptiness that sometimes comes with E precisely the bit where you're all too aware of the manufactured nature of the experience, and you mistakenly search for deeper meanings?
My point is, if the important bit is the euphoria etc, why get so upset about the religion? (besides all the intellectual objections of course.)
M: The yawning feeling is what I would like to avoid by having something to offer, some responsible quasi-religious message, that could sate the soul-searching and make people better off.
C: Now that would be something!
M: Indeed.
C: Any sense of where that would come from? Love of fellow human beans? Ruthless individualism?
M: It's almost as though if you make music with enough power, and play it in the right situation, you pretty much have an opportunity to PROGRAM people with whatever you choose! (Maybe I'll just program people to wear silly clothes, like most bands...)
C: er, not sure about that really... beyond PROGRAMming them to buy your cds/come and see you play live again... Surely the PROGRAMming aspect of the church downstairs depends on two millenia of cultural movements; generation after generation of religion... That's a helluva lot to compete with!
M:
[re: what message to convey] I dunno. The good bits - trust, love, not taking misfortune personally, knowing that the world is chaotic, but we can still do good in our little microcosms of existence... [But] my very choice of pseudonym - "Smunk", sets up the minimum possible seriousness...
C:
It's not too late to change [your pseudonym] to "A Thread of Trust in the Uncertainty of Chaos" or something...
M:
>:-(
C:
not really. Smunk's good.
M: Kinda needs something to flag that it isn't intended as throwaway silliness.. Too many layers of idiosyncratic 'irony' in there...
C: Why not change it to Smonk to get a hint of ascetic contemplation in there...
M:
>:-(
Um...
C:
You could start performing in a habit -- and shave the top of your head! Should I run with this more?
M:
>:-( >:-( >:-( >:-(
Go on...
C:
No.
M:
I'm laughing, don't you mind!
C: Well, a dash of Gregorian chant would certainly add a twist to Darned No Good Shoes...
M:OKAY THAT'S IT!
M: You're fired.
M: Um...
C: Looking forward to my severance pay...
[...divergence for a few minutes...]
M:
God. How am I gonna get this religion thing on my blog...?
C: Hmm.
M: I've got some other stuff to put up there too...
C:
Perhaps just describe the dream?
M: I think I want to explain my conclusions too though - I don't want it to end up all "..."-ey
C: There could be a problem with dictating to people what message they should get out of your music though...
M: Well, life is made of problems...
C: Damn straight
C:
Maybe you could ask for suggestions from people as to what they'd most like you to PROGRAM them with?
M: A POLL!
M: Anyways - I can see this dream causing some changes in my approach... (Great - more changes)
C: Evolvolution!
M: Possibly a new pseudonym and migration of blog...
Maybe a bit drastic... (And I own www.smunk.net!!!)
C: [...] I thought this post was really good: undercurrent...
M: Let's 'ave a look then.
C:
Here's another bit I like:
"The mechanical uncanny, and this ambivalence of the fairground, site of engines of pleasure, mystery and desire, is one of the elements I imagine bringing together in imagined music. Because every time I listen to ‘For the Benefit of Mr Kite' I want to stay in the world it miraculously conjures up, for just a moment longer, to hear more. This is greatness in music, as in other art forms: to create the impression that the work itself is just a small part of a whole occulted alternate cosmos. Of course it may be pure hubris to attempt to re-create that parallel universe, or even one in the same neighborhood. But I can't help it."
[from undercurrent]
Don't think you need to know or like the song in question to dig the point there.
M: Points pretty well made...Reminds me of Lorne in Pylea "People see you a certain way, you start to become that image. I know, cos I know how they see ME!"
(To the story-telling Angel)
C: So one way to work on the Smunk 'message' may be via the creation of a consistent world where things are more how they should be....
M:
oh...kay...
C:
TRUTH conveyed via sonic fiction (very much as it can be via literary fiction)
M:
Did I blog that thought (about music as fiction)? [...] Dammit - I didn't
C: Clearly we're talking artifice, manufacture of something new. But one aspect of what we've been talking about is how to make that something more... would you say?
M: I was thinking about that distinction between 'serious' music and silly fiction music - if there is one
C: It's not clear to me what that distinction would be
M:
[re: how to make a fiction say something more] Yes - I mean, that's why I love Buffy...
C:
Exactly!
M:
Truth conveyed through obvious fiction. But how to do it...
C: Isn't part of Buffy's power the consistency of her universe? Massive flexibility in terms of, say, the laws of physics, but truth in terms of emotion, consequences etc.
M: Yes. I think it is.
How to be musically consistent..? Without resorting to genre...?
C: Build your own genre!
M: I have a tendency to avoid repeating a formula though... In fact, I'm usually unhappy if I do ANYTHING more than once...
C:
just keep honing that vision -- or ausion
M: A sound, a chord sequence.. Although I am starting to get more relaxed about that
C: Not repeating could perfectly well be a first principle. In fact it clearly is.
M: Interesting...
C: (Not not repeating at all; but not doing the same thing twice)
M:
But doesn't consistency imply repetition?
C: No! In D&G's terms [or link or link], the plane of consistency is 'that which things with nothing in common have in common' -- to quote Nick Land approximately.
M:
Um.................................................................
C: Consistency is the degree zero -- as opposed to the supplementary dimensions imposed by a God-like goal or telos
M: Okay - you're gonna have to translate that into non-D&G language for me
C: disposable axioms rather than moral principles; experimentation rather than the working out of a predefined plan
M: So, in the sense of "A laws of physics"..? (not sic)
C: Not sure what you mean by "A laws"
M: as opposed to "THE laws"
C: OK, yeah.... You can define consistency negatively, as the absence of a higher order
M: Example please...
C: Religion could have consistency just as you were saying before -- a way of setting up a territory within the howling void of chaos
M:
In what way does that have an 'absence of a higher order'?
C: but consistency (and arguably a 'better' consistency) can be achieved without the supernatural stuff
C: It has the 'absence of a higher order' because there IS an absence of a higher order! Religion just pretends otherwise
M:
I think you might be saying 'higher' where I'd say 'lower'... So I think I understand... First Principles kinda thing.
So science is the search for the 0th order of things. But will, of course, never be satisfied that it has found that.
C: Quite possibly! Consistency is something fragile and temporary that you can set up... through habit, through control, through experimentation
M:
But I'd want to set up my axioms for a reason! I'd WANT there to be a reason they are a certain way.
C: Isn't achieving consistency a pretty good reason?
M: Yes. But how to settle?
C:
See what works! It might not work for long, but that's ok! It's a stage on the way somewhere else.
M: Pop music works...
C: Absolutely. Problem is the 'more of the same' aspect. Doesn't mean that lots of people won't be entirely happy with it.
M: Where does something cease to be 'more of the same' and become a 'plane of consistency'?
C:
Perhaps it depends on the individual -- each needing and constructing different protections against the howling void. Your 'more of the same' may well be my plane of consistency, and vice versa. (Doubt it like)
M: That crazy howling void!
C: AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it goes.
M: How can this consistency offer protection unless it is perceived as TRUTH?
C: Maybe it's all about different coping strategies. The role TRUTH plays will depend on the importance of that word in any given individual's vocabulary.
M:
Everybody wants to know the truth. Don't they?
C:
Do they bollocks!
M:
Of course they do!
M:
Political scandals in the papers, trials, religion, trust and mistrust...
C:
But there's bound to be a discrepancy -- not to say a yawning chasm -- between, say, the truth for the individual organism and the truth for the species, the world, the cosmos...
M:
Levels of truth...
C:
Absolutely!
M:
But we don't tend to think that way.
C:
How do you decide which truth it is that matters to you most? E.g. those offered on telly, in music, in drugs, in religion, in sex, in filling your belly, in physics, etc etc
In other words, never mind the ultimate answer, what's the ultimate question?
M:
I guess you're born into certain ways of searching for such things... predisposed by your childhood to ask certain questions.
C: Absolutely. Which inevitably means that different kinds of answers (or the lack thereof) will suit different folks.
M: You ask the questions that have the most immediate relevance to your life...
:.
2:29:19 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Conversations Religion
Care to comment?
