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Post by neilnv2 on Nov 29, 2023 6:18:40 GMT -5
Joan A. is very quick here to say what she's written is good and there's no doubt. Her response is so quick it's like she speaks with no need for thought. She speaks from feeling.
If that's a Black trait, it's also sn elitist one. If you know you're good there's no need for thought. Sometimes it pays to think; sometimes it doesn't. Bach wrote 6-line counterpoint, but as far as I gather the harmony is not so much thought-out as a 'natural harmony'. By contrast, Steve Reich's harmony is completely thought-out and an irritating drag.
To be able not to think is a mark of superiority. The feeling of ragtime (Scott Joplin.) But if that's so it has become an invisible trait. Ralph Ellison wrote Invisible Man in 1952; now there is another reason for invisibility, the fact that one has to think of the individual and not the race (see comments.)
The fact is, though, that rhe scientific culture we live in is white-dominated, znd it's not ragtime. It's linear thought, words. This can go a certain way, but in the end there is a type of harmony, often circular, that is way beyond words.
Joan A. talks of "layers", and it's also hesitations, pauses, accents, subtle pacing. All these come from the raw material of music, the roots rhythms.
Raw material cannot be verbal, it's a priori and contains many layers acting in harmony. If it's an unthinking harmony, it cannot be thought-out.
The modern scene is irritatingly monotonous for the reason the so-called harmoniousness is completely thought-out, like a Steve Reich score. The opposite trend is a traditional Chinese hutong, with a lot of chaos that is also relatively serene.
Where a lot of different things are continually active, there cannot be universal harmony, only a type of serenity that is found in the jostling together of different things with common purposes.
So, while Joan A's Symphony has flaws, the fact that it is going for a feeling is good and is the roots of music that modernism is never that aware of.
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Post by neilnv2 on Nov 30, 2023 6:15:24 GMT -5
I guess if one is talking thematic development one doesn't necessarily need to get too harmonic about it. Bachtrack seems to give her the benefit here. There is development, though not thematic in the 'conventional' sense.
I like this review, partly because they cite Appalachian Spring. Copland deliberately aims for folksy simplicity and, frankly, it's just as difficult - perhaps more so (comic strip art can appear simple.) A story told simply is easier to get, and allies to Joan A's naivety, as previously mentioned. So the difference between this classical piece and her earlier songs may be more of genre than of style (as for movement 3, must have missed it.) PS As noted previously, Joan A. plays all the instruments, though here she played then electronically (with also an electric piano.) This almost harks back to the days when composers were instrumentalists. The fact it's electronic is just the medium its composed in, the composer is in charge (accidental pun.) The small scale also puts less emphasis on the conductor, and perhaps that's no bad thing. Electronics isn't bad since it's just the age we live in, but it can be depending on who's in charge.
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Post by neilnv2 on Dec 1, 2023 10:30:39 GMT -5
Where confusion reigns....
prophets are people who know. What do they know? The question's irrelevant, since if we knew what they know there would be no need for prophets.
Joan A. knows she's good, so let's call her a musical prophet. Working from the raw materials of music, she can construct in her electronic studio anything ranging from blues stomps to a classical suite (given time of course.)
This is where confusion can arise, since I've been saying for quite awhile that our digital world is heading towards zero, the great monotony of logical streams of thought and words telling us what to think and say.
Well, there was an old Angus McKie story in Heavy Metal, whose name I've forgotten, with the tagline 'It depends if you're an optimist or a pessimist.' In an almost Manichean sense, there are two sides to everything, and electronics has a positive and negative side. Once we all live in smart houses that's good, but if we're told what to do all the time that's bad.
Joan A. is using electronics as a medium for her raw material and thereby dominating the medium. The raw material and the roots rhythms are the reality (that she is in.)
If you turn that equation round, western society corrupts the raw material of life (and death) by turning everything around, and viewing it first as a logical stream (electronics) or digital thought, and second as the humans inhibiting it (raw material.)
It takes someone who knows they are good to be aware of roots rhythms as the reality. It's Armatradian subtlety, Lee Perry's Trojan dubs, both dominate the technology with feeling.
(Buddha and the Chocolate Box) (NOTE. The Armatrading suite/symphony has established itself in z week. 'The soul of the music is not conflict or drama but lyricism, relying on repetition and variation rather than development.'-seenandheard. I think that's right, I noticed phrases repeated 6,7,8 times and with the use of canon. The idea of thoughtful but simple music is an idea whose time may have come. Is Bach not that?) STOP PRESS After 60 years in the business, Dylan has suddenly released a symphony. Titled Symphony No 1 in whine flat there are four movements. Slow, slow, slow, tacet with drone. Reviews to be announced. [Meta critic Poly Styrene has released this statement. This one has heard the future. Even with the sub-audible droning this reduced me to tiers and I emitted a piercing shriek, quaking in my boots like protoplasm. Is one in bondage to the laurel logic of..continues in raving stream of consciousness]
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Post by neilnv2 on Dec 8, 2023 5:25:11 GMT -5
] Linda Perry had a comment on the blandified production that was NOT released, as she went back to Massachusetts and rerecord it in a more or less live take. For a long time I thought her comment applied to the released version, so had the exact opposite take to the correct one.
This is typical of the garbled recycling of news; you can tell that she's playing a good thing that she likes, dictating her own agenda. People tend to forget or not know that art in past ages was a dictatorship, whether it's Stonehenge or Machhu Pichu's waving rain-serpent**, or Egypt, or the Greek pantheon, or Roman copies (Caesar.)
There are always negative things one could say about that (or Soviet-era poster-art), but infinitely worse is to live in a vague area where even artists' statements are misread. There can be no compromise on artistic values, the symmetry of the human form (Armatrading's 'From the Bottom to the Top').
Artists have e to tell people and machines what to do and not be told, because there is a naive, a priori area where harmony is a given. The unstable harmony of a live performance (captured on record.)
I caught a Japanese anime called 'Sing a Bit of Harmony' about an AI pretence of humanity. Going by 'Ghost in the Shell', this is a typical Japanese inclination. The opposite tendency is to have no compromise with machines, because they are not naive - however cute - and they have an innate complexity rather than simplicity.
Japanese 'logic' seems to defy this Manichean idea with cuteness*. The unyielding stance of artists cannot be compromised; Perry's studio has the gizmos, but it's not where she gets her ideas. She's "a fucking monster out there" (gestures) rather than in the entrapment of the studio, however convenient.
* Japanese gardens, though, have a sort of controlled chaos that can come across as naive (see Grace Slick 'Somebody to Love?' page 19)
** Sorry, Chichen Itza on the Yucatan is the shadow serpent of the Maya. Obviously, these simple rituals of fertility have a universal symmetry as Earth spins (equinox). If this is the physical world of action and belief, we live in the vague computer complexity of vacant psyche. What's the point of going to Mars if we don't know what we're doing there? Musically, Poly Styrene has things to say, also Zappa's Inca Roads. (DH Lawrence 'The Plumed Serpent')
Footnote I got listening to JA's The Tempest Songs for Shakespeare's play, and from there to the Elizabethan poets.. Spenser's sonnet 'Men Call you Fair' Men call you fair, and you do credit it, For that yourself ye daily self do see. But the true fair, that is the gentle wit, And virtuous mind, is much more prais'd of me. For all the rest, however fair it be, Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue: But only that is permanent and free From frail corruption, that doth flesh ensue. That is true beauty: that doth argue you To be divine and born of heavenly seed: Derived from that fair Spirit, from whom all true Abd perfect beauty did at first proceed. He only fair, and what he fair hath made, All other fair, like flowers untimely fade.
Allegories of love supply the means of beauty and order in nature. Love is the naive performance of fertility, or an a priori reality (spin, symmetry or dance.) By this criteria, beauty and order are seen in the medieval communes (of free towns) beyond any intellectual capacity. Renaissance humanists, starting from the 14th century Petrarch who revived Cicero, went against the com.unes and into empirical inquiry of z Republic.
The a priori reality is lost in the pursuit of the Republic. Charlton Heston, playing El Cid, says in his autobiography, "The belief in the scene tells you how to act" (paraphrased). The belief of the crowd in El Cid as he mounts the stone steps.
Heston also played the impetuous Marc Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, the type who can become a dictator and suppress the (Roman) Republic. These are the two extremes I want to get across; the rational Republic versus the impetuous, active leader.
Artists who are ruled by ideas are natural leaders. "The ideas tell you how they want to be" (David Lynch.) If belief is rooted in the a priori (love, beauty and order), there is a basic contradiction with a Republic founded on rational principles of inquiry. (reference 'Hearts and Flowers' and track Something in the Air Tonight) Note on communes. One could say it's the opposite of globalism. Wealth and power are held by rules of proportion (size of commune) as opposed to some airy fairy abstraction of numbers. NOV24 post: I noticed while listening to 'Hearts and Flowers' I felt more intelligent. I don't think it was IQ, just a feeling. The feeling could be introspection or meditation, not just thought or words but the type. One review called this the "sensible" album, so maybe I was struck by the sense. Music is also harmonic, so it's a more powerful feeling (than lyric.) In the beginning was not thought but the word, but what word? It's not something that's easy to say but could easily take introspection and good music. (Brooding introspection is another way to put it, someone who doesn't fit into the regular channels and is able to express that. Possibly the original artist/shaman. Paul Radin in Primitive Religion specifies two types of people who don't necessarily understand each other, two worlds. IQ is what you might call linear thinking. Brooding is poetic, probably harmonic layers and closer to expressive reality. Two worlds. IQ may be necessary but Ada Lovelace, the poet Byron's daughter, called herself a 'poetic scientist' (the analytical engine...
It might be worth putting a note in here on how programming has progressed since Lovelace. Alan Turing disagreed with Lovelace that "computers are incapable of originality" since they can be programmed (to be original), however we are now in the age of smart things that make life convenient.
The difference between humans and computers is that we are physical, the body has experiences. If you believe the physical imbues the psyche, then that is the true origin. Computers are shoddy facsimiles at the very best.
The proof is also in the pudding. Pro Tools is used by all music studios and is quick and accurate. One can program something harmonically, but it's still a program first. The physical experience and our muscles tell us how to dance. This is a physical value (see JA songs Love and Affection, More Than One Kind of Love.)
The value affects us, we are affected. That's the only test worth anything (despite the so-called Turing test.) We are physical or we are zero. IQ is not a reliable test.
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Post by neilnv2 on Dec 13, 2023 7:50:44 GMT -5
Semantics and Metaphysics
Sorry for the long words, but that post was rather long-winded and this simplifies it. Words are related to what they are talking about, ie metaphysically. One has to consider both things. The lyrics to 'Love and Affection' seem straightforward, but can one love without affection?
One could conceivably love a supercomputer for the things it could do, but it wouldn't be reciprocal. We have touch-screens but they don't touch back. So affection can be taken to mean 'touch' or the physical side. The quasi-semblance of reality we are approaching is because of that metaphysical idea. That seems to be why measures like IQ are no longer good measures, because it depends on the reality you are in. The reality that is physical (touch) affects us, and anything else is 'stupid love' in Gaga's phrase. That has to impinge on the Republic, or whatever society one happens to inhabit.
(PS I realize one can love one's car, but in the final analysis one needs reciprocation)
Monterey 1967 is a good example of hippy reciprocal attitudes. If you look at Pennebaker's film on YouTube, a lot of the comments are saying things like 'whatever happened to the carefree days?' Well, it's just basically something that happened with little organisation. John Philips and the Mamas did everything, which wasn't much. There was no need, it's more natural that way.
Wow, this answers a question on Greek folk music with its modal arabesques and base chords that make it sound 'Eastern' (see his comment.) Greece is a fusion of East and West that is ancient and original. Dionysus is oriental mysticism (druggy, hippy). Apollo without Dionysus is a bankrupt system, the cybernetic mirror of illusions, a so-called harmonised world without the primal sense of touch (body and carefree feeling.) A Black artist is easily both East and West.
Quote (32 mins), "Greek music cannot be orientalised because you cannot make a tomato into more of a tomato." On similar lines, there is type of natural harmony that doesn't need harmonising. This is where origins and ancient principles and folksyness come from, the carefree sounds of bagpipes and songs, Greek or otherwise. Even in Mozart's day the music was sometimes played alla turca, meaning as a Janissary marching band.
Carefree ancient sound of pastoral people, natural harmony of the instrument (East or West, where's the best?)
(Faraji is worth quoting as he is so dismissive of Western categories, standing there pointing out geographical features, the "material reality". So how do we supposedly live in the material world? I think it's a Westernisation, not the reality. The only thing that separates reality from a figment of electricity is the material world - body, circular movement, death, revival. Only the physical world gives you things to do that can't possibly be programmed. Faraji also has a post on bagpipes where he is careful to define music traditions such as Celtic essentially geographically, which you could say is the physical reality. Natural harmony implies that artistic touch is intrinsic, in the actual material or flesh.)
A retro comment on the JA symphony occurred, since a couple of reviews* expressed surprise that an artist known for baring her soul should not be explicitly emotional. That's a very difficult one to answer, since trills or arabesques can be emotional as heard in the bagpipe sound. It's not high emotion, it's a deliberate folksiness.
*Alternate reality review: Sigh. An emotional symphony that disconnects is tragic. What we have here is the worst. Out-pie jesu-ing Lloyd-Webber without the soprano, this symphony is not only a dog but a mongrel, a cur that fittingly resembles its mistress in the looks department. The popstar serves-up a predictably emotive offering and it would be nice to say, with Gayesque whooping and hollering, that this belongs in the past. Unfortunately it only belongs in the addled mental state of this elderly, instrumental Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. - apologies to 'Taking My Baby Uptown'
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Post by neilnv2 on Dec 19, 2023 10:21:37 GMT -5
This is what Faraji does, apparently. It's Greek music but of course sounds vaguely oriental with ornamented syllables. A useful analogy he uses is a Venn diagram (of overlapping circles) describing 'separate' categories that historically overlap.
That idea can easily be pursued as, for example, eye, nose and throat are multi-organ systems that overlap in function through glandular secretions. Yes, a Venn diagram is one description, another is harmonic interference, assuming organic systems have intrinsic harmony.
Even another way to look at it is 'thesis, antithesis, synthesis' (from Hegel) where two different things lead to a third. All of these are possible, which implies that reality does not exist in 'boxes'. Boxes are so useful that, as Faraji maintains, they tend to dominate thinking.
Yeah, right, and boxes taken to the ultimate are switches, one is off, one is on. In that case, they cannot overlap, it's physically impossible. So the digital system we inhabit does not tally with reality. Does it matter?
Well, it makes zero indispensable, since 'off' is the equivalent of zero. The logic dictates it. It doesn't matter as long as the artist dominates the logical box- as Armatrading does in her studio. But, as always there are two sides to the equation, and logic tends to dominate because boxes are so neat and tidy.
So it comes down to neatness (harmonising reality) versus chaos, meaning separate things that are not artificially harmonised but nevertheless overlap and create a natural harmony.
However, the natural harmony is essentially active. It only applies to separate things that are active separately and able to interact independently.
Basically, that is a natural system. Today's 'harmonised systems' do not allow that. But, as stated previously (Faraji quote), one can't harmonise something that is already harmonic.
So, basically a logical system that dominates confuses neatness and regularity (boredom) for harmony. Boredom is a psychological situation, since it's obvious the physical reality has to affect the psyche. Even if the modern order doesn't consider the physical situation (apart from comfort), our psyche can never be considered separate from the physical.
Boredom can also become a tool of oppression, since a physically chaotic townscape has many outlets for free-expression. Animals may roam, such as horses in fields, or goats on Caribbean beaches (Countryman.)
Free-expression implies self-government, which is the opposite tendency to the boredom of logical systems. The irritating dual-note that oscillates between one and zero (Jirel Meets Magic) is a good analogy for this, since the logic dictates a continual return to zero. It cannot exist any other way than in two separate boxes, and therefore operates without intrinsic harmony, which is when two things create a third.
(Another example is a double reed that vibrates to create a sound. A serpent weaving left and right to go forward, maybe even a tree branch.)
Footnote I happened to checkout Von K's link to Viking poetry, which you could say is an illustration of the physical situation affecting the psyche. That could easily include the weather, as in this lyric by Cat Stevens/Yusuf 'Then the stranger sang with a voice like the wind Then the heavens began to sing, Welcoming' (Welcome Home from Roadsinger)
Those who stand on the surface of the spinning globe have in common the physical situation. Caribbean fishers, beach goats, marsh birds. Poetry finds commonality in differences where the physical is paramount.
Vikings are poets of deeds which have to be the opposite of boredom. In the absence of blood and debauchery, Yusuf chooses to write of a spiritual quest in often hymnlike verse using imagery of roads, towns, deserts, flowers, animals, weather (All Kinds of Roses.)
Joan Armatrading has many similarities; she chooses to focus on the physicality of the body for her own reasons. In any case, the physical sense is what informs the poetic imagery, so if the physical reality contains intrinsic harmony the effect on the psyche is palpable.
It takes the strong psyche to be true to the physical reality (Armatrading's book of lyrics is tellingly called 'The Weakness In Me'.) Modernity churns out psychic weakness, and the lyrical boredom of contemporary pop is just one symptom.
Weakness has to reflect the physical, since despite the fact things are programmed, we inhabit a physical space (the smart home or a Meta-verse.)
Programming is a type of language, but it clearly does not have the musical phrases and repeated syllables that poetry does. Poetry comes out of a physical reality; words which are purely programmatic take us out of the physical - or the physicality of the body in action - to where the mentality is weak (susceptible to control, confusion.)
..carrying on from there, artists are transformative and modernity has put the whole area of transformation aside. One could date it from round about the time of Weird Tales and Louis Sullivan art-deco buildings; the organic becomes a sphinx as in Egypt.
An artist I just stumbled on, Hannes Bok, was slightly later but echoes Brundage's florid shapes and colors. Seemingly a Renaissance Man, he became a reclusive in a The Studio-like retreat in NYC. If you assume there are different types of intelligence, the shaman-artist is one, and the 'pedestrian' intelligence is another.
The transformative types need materials to transform, and of course they center on the productions of nature (as with Kaluta and Co at The Studio.) Nature is transformative, which is not the same as evolution; this goes to the root of the archetypal universe that modernity has let go.
It is the swirling shapes on feathers, the linework that is essentially energetic and intrinsic. Since the twenties, those energies have been left behind and we see them in the pulps of the day. I wonder if the good musicians like Stevens and Armatrading are somewhat reclusive for those types of reasons, the sense of loss?
Put another way, fear of losing what you have as a human being on the face of the earth. To JA, "When you go home, the reason it's beautiful is because it's personal to you and to the people you choose to include in it." Since 2003, songs are produced at her Bumpkin Studios. So it's magic, or spirit in the case of Yusuf.*
Lee Perry built Black Ark Studios and was convinced it was filled with magic vibes. It burned down and for a long while his superstitious nature was confounded. Ritual, ganja.
Is each human a 'Speck' in the cosmos (Linda Perry)? It depends on what we're told, what we're exposed to, what we have as ours. Superstition snd ritual are creative acts, poetry is reborn. To quote (?) Harlan Ellison, let's be careful out there.
* Another similarity between the two is actually cartoon drawing. Stevens set-out to be an artist and drew cartoons for such as Buddha and the Chocolate Box album. This could go with a type of thought-process that is naive and just happens. The powerful fairy-tale imagery of Boy With a Moon and Star on His Head.
Stevens has said lyrics come through repeating the tune like a sort of hypnotic mantra. Cartoons are forms that appear 'like magic'. The Western notion that everything needs deliberation may be incorrect; words and thought get in the way of the spontaneity of simultaneous occurrences that just happen.
Why do they happen? Because some things are more intrinsically harmonious than others in the sense of simultaneous and overlapping activity. This cannot involve linear thought, and could easily be a mixture of Western chord harmony with Eastern trills or variable line.
That's often known as the 'vertical' and 'horizontal' approaches to music. Music is inevitable in any spontaneous, simultaneous harmonious and variable activities (cartoon forms.) Neither of these two artists have deliberate thought-processes ("no conversation") of what is termed Western mainstream.
Thought impedes process when there is what can be termed musical events. Both these two artists are extremely intelligent and what could be termed taciturn. The Western mainstream is run by words and 'streaming' and not by events that just happen. The sense of loss therefore has to be musical and anything related such as magic of ritual.
Basically, a society is a higher level development to a body. If a body is musical so is a society. Clearly there is room for logical processes but at the same time processes that just happen and don't meed running. The artist-shaman in primitive societies has vastly more say in belief without the need for control in the 'usual' sense.
[A reasonable question is: if things are spontaneous, how does that account for DNA? Denis Noble way back when was intimating that there are many small movements in cells that could act in a semi-musical way. Rhythm alone can't differentiate to create form.
The question is really: what controls differentiation? DNA does not control, it stops and starts processes/proteins. Since we exist in a logical society we might assume switches control things. No, they only control logical events.
Control in terms of form has to be formal. In other words, when amounts of things are moving together AND inside cytoplasm medium, there are musical similarities. There has to be, otherwise things would be disharmonious. However, cytoplasm is a gel within which there are mechanical stresses and strains of the molecular arrangements; music is vibration whereas this is mechanical (or, music is an artform whereas this is reality.) How the stresses operate musically has to be down to the arrangements themselves having intrinsic harmony in terms of the geometry. I know that sounds like a circular argument and maybe it is. . If one assumes geometric harmony, one is talking of a moving building, with rhythms and flows analogous to melodic lines. Unless one assumes a foundation of geometric harmony,one is talking in thin air. The whirling energies and circular motifs one finds in nature that are stable. Without these there is no stable foundation.
Where we're talking movements, experiments have limited use. DNA is easy to experiment on. It's not a control mechanism, it's much more like a switch that can itself be switched off and on. That might appeal to scientists, but a living thing is to do with movements inside cells. These are not easy or impossible to experiment on but they are the control mechanism. It has to be so because only movement can control movement (that is a logical statement) and form can only be generated formally. That has to involve musical analogies, and the reason DNA has become paramount is purely scientific.] Comment on above; one way to look at it is DNA is a blueprint missing the energetic foundation. For example, height of individual or size of nose misses out the fact bones are proportionate tubes while a nose is created by whorls (as are ears.) The energetic foundation has expressive qualities of proportion or the comparative relation to whole. The energetic foundation is a mixture of intrinsic harmony (whorls, tubes, circular forms), and melodic lines connecting parts (rhythms and flows of intercellular signals). Without the rhythm, harmony and variable flow there couldn't possibly be proportion (DNA is only information.) '(The tiny image) seemed to Kull to represent the true proportion of himself.' The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune 'The Greeks measured harmony geometrically as a proportion.' Quote from 'it's her factory'.** Ancient Greeks would visualise harmony as proportionate ratios, for example on musical instruments. The ideal permeated areas such as ethics and the concept of moderation in behaviour.
** Looking at the top end of Robin James' post, speaking acoustically she has neoliberalism as a harmonic sine wave. That strikes one as electricity (radio) that is converted to sound. Once one gets to the digital era, it's still electricity but it's now put into boxes or switches (off, on.) That implies a digital era can't measure harmony. The rest is as outlined above.
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Post by neilnv2 on Dec 28, 2023 7:39:44 GMT -5
Over the course of writing on DNA I discovered this quote, 'The Greeks measured harmony geometrically as a proportion', that completely matched (para 1.)
The intrinsic harmony of the body is by way of geometry. As with the nose and ear have whorls of nostril, lobe. Without the geometry there can be no harmony, so what is the geometry? It is whorls, proportionate tubes, circular energies.
With the harmony also come rhythms and flows, and what could be called 'melodic lines.' In other words, there has to be a foundation, any thing else is in thin air. DNA does not have the energetic foundation; there are stochastic flows of genes and the geometry itself provides the foundation.
That makes logical sense as well as I suppose empirical.
www.its-her-factory.com/2013/03/ancient-greek-neoliberal-harmony-pt-1-sophrosyne-as-proportion/
‘Ig’* is no longer replying, but I sent him this as a sort of summary. I’ve meanwhile been following mixcloud for interviews of JA and caught this one on Take2 where she’s talking about I Like It When We’re Together (Not Too Far Away). ‘Like’ is a soft word that implies compatibility, when you could love your family despite all their faults. It’s a strong word in the context of being amiable and comfortable. That led me to realize that context is extremely important in understanding. In the physical sense, context is a proportion of whatever’s there, so a nose is seen in the context of the face. Scientifically-speaking there’s often not much context since ‘whatever’s there’ is not presently known. Sometimes this is very apparent. DNA gives height; eye color; size of nose. But the context for this would be the outline silhouette of a human figure; the opal shape and disposition of the eye under brow ridge; the double whorls of the nostrils and straight or flared shape. All that constitutes the body’s foundation. The information given by DNA is essentially zero in the context of the body’s foundation. Within the context of the body’s foundation, there is rhythm and flow of signals which one could think of as melodic lines. In other words, with the geometry of the body one can measure harmonious proportions and the rhythm and flows between the proportionate parts. It’s a circular argument that says without the foundation there is no context.** But this could be because of the a priori movements, whorls, proportionate tubes, circular energies. Movements are continuous actions, and from the physical reality seems to develop harmony. This analog reality is not presently known to science. It might not be that surprising that a discrete, discontinuous reality can be known, since in that case there is no continuous harmony. So we get digital information. But, like DNA, the context is missing because this has to be the physical reality, the one that is not presently known to science. Any Meta or smart-verse seemingly has to be digital because it is run by programs. So seemingly programs have to be lacking a physical context because that is just the digital-verse. The physical context is at present not known to science, but context is quite often indispensable for understanding. I tend to notice that Black intellectuals are vastly more true to the physical context, which are the raw, roots rhythms. Poetic, musical, lyrical. There's more truth in Benjamin Zephaniah than an infinite stream of 'Igs' forever debating and seemingly opposed to neo-Darwinian principles. Rather than debate, there is the Greek principle of Dionysus, which you might say Armatrading represents in herself, her art. Small, perfectly formed, satyr-like (height 1.54 metres), the value placed on emotion, the transformative tactility in a universe of androids. The ancient Greeks could well call this psychic truth in the context of raw physicality We are rapidly entering a parallel illusory universe of discrete, interrupted reality that is known to science but has literally no physical context, an infinite loop of zero.*** * This is what students apparently call Noble ** By this I mean the fallacy that information can lead to something without non-information. One keeps circling back to the presence of non-information. *** A bit more on Robin James from previous post. She goes on to the neoliberal (competitive) society that increasingly uses music as an explanation of math. This increasingly is data-science and she points out companies are called 'Symphony' and so on. Because they use sine wave (electronic technology) to describe harmony, their ideas of harmony are different to the Greeks. Ancient Greek ideals use harmonic proportions, physical measurements. Proportion is a fundamental principle to Greeks that includes masculine virtue (the strong, restrained citizen.) Therefore, the neoliberal drive is to explain reality with data, and not proportion. (I should point out James specialises in acoustics but this does seem pretty relevant to other subjects like DNA.) 'Frequency curves' are frequently used to describe people (statistically) and she points out that music makes these descriptions palatable. In fact, the descriptions are not reality, not people, but numbers posing as people. (I previously made the point that expressive algorithms could pose as people.) PS I don't like to say it but back on Sept19 the email to Noble was specifically on his attribution of a musical score To DNA.
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Post by neilnv2 on Dec 30, 2023 9:02:46 GMT -5
NATURAL RHYTHM (track from 'Consequences)
Robin James calls herself a theorist, and we seem to live in an age where that's a dirty word. As long as we have sufficient data there's no need for theory - but what if the data is wrong? In terms of Greek philosophy, this means 'harmony without proportion', since much of Greek philosophy takes proportion as a physical aspect of harmony (in music, Pythagoras, the golden mean 3:2 ratio of a perfect 5th on a guitar string monochord.)
All this is quite familiar, so it's pretty interesting James points to the neoliberal acoustic doctrine of 'harmonising data with frequency operations' (the sine wave.) This is almost like a direct illustration of CL Moore's Jirel Meets Magic, with a 'Symphony' of data-frequency curves.
It's also pretty interesting that Noble related DNA code to a musical score. He is a physiologist, but all sciences match doctrine to a certain extent, so this would certainly give sociology a platform for their harmonising data programs.
Pythagoras and music suppose an origin for things that is proportionate. Origin implies something a priori; a spontaneous activity, an intrinsic harmony.
As previously noted (of Faraji), one cannot harmonise what is already harmonic. Music goes with the natural proportions that are harmonic. This is an origin according to Pythagoras and why argue with a thousands year old Greek?
No, the modern argument simply uses the psychological attraction of music to engineer a new harmony of frequency curves and numbers. The fact that the harmony has no proportion doesn't worry them since they're not dealing with individual human beings who have proportionate bodies. They are dealing with averages and numbers.
As James notes, these power-relations of modernity and neoliberal economics were antcipated by Foucault and his theory of knowledge. Music is a type of knowledge of layered arrangements of instruments. But the knowledge is founded on proportion. The lie of modernity is that knowledge without proportion can have its own harmony. No, it's illusory. It's a corruption of human impulses.
The knowledge of DNA is illusory without the knowledge of proportion. We are entering an illusory reality confounded by scientific data and the confusions with music. Music is an origin; DNA is not. Form has precedence.
'A thousand words can't say how much you mean to me I'll paint a picture in the sky for you'
Note on post Dec 8: JA is pretty unique in being extremely intellectual and physical at the sane time. This really goes back to the Elizabethan poets (Spenser) who valued love as a means to natural order. Dec 8 talks about the rational Republic and I think one has to be aware how the Greeks (who Spenser imitates) viewed a 'rational' society. The principle of rationality is very complex and involves the proportionate (moderate) use of reason. There is also pleasure, which must be moderated. The idea of a 'rational' society based on number would probably never have occurred to the Greeks. Number is harmonious (Pythagoras). Rationality is a means of determining what is. Thete is no supposition that everything is rational, since there is also love and beauty (natural order for Elizabethan poets.) The Greeks valued athletics, which matches quite well with REH. His humorous yarns of Bear Creek have a fantastic amount of rolling around on the floor scrapping, clambering, jumping and landing, 'catlike' stance. Other stories have swimming and clambering, diving, thrusting, parrying. The mechanical principles of survival can be studied rationally, but they are not in themselves rational. They are proportionate. The purpose of studying reality is to determine what is, not what is rational. The rational is complex and guys like Noble appear to be too much on the side of number - what he called 'music' or the creation of a new harmony with frequency curves and probably a digitised framework - rather than what is actually real. The activity of the body in athletic survival.
Footnote The title of Nietzsche's seminal book is 'The Birth of Tragedy..Out of the Spirit of Music'. It would be scarcely fair to call JA's music melancholic, but she does aim at a type of realism. Let there be no illusions or delusions ('Wishing'), and affirmation in the face of reality ('Let it Last', the definitive version of this is Rockpalast 79).
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 1, 2024 10:48:13 GMT -5
In view of previous post I wrote this short story
"Hitler's Bride" (the story takes place immediately following the Rockpalast concert in Germany, 1980)
Joan sighed. Life was good. Half-way through the world tour she was standing on the tarmac waiting to board Iberian Airways flight 123 when she felt a light touch on her right shoulder. Turning, she beheld a miniature Valkyrie who stared her straight in the eye (ie. at 1.54 metres.)
"Joan, I represent the Brides of Hitler and we have an offer for you." "Do I look like a Nazi?" protested Joan. "The fuhrer was mistaken, but we are brides of an idea only. It is, how do you say it, metaphorical." "Hmmn.. that's a long word." "Please just come to the café Space Joint on the Brandenburg and you can make your own decision. It's just round the corner." "Well..OK then." Calls back, "Guys, I'm getting the next flight."
Her startled band members were used to her solo ways, and merely sent her detail padding after her. The café was a typical Berlin one, meaning totally atypical.
"Wow," sighed Joan, "this is ace." "And this is Max," introduced the fraulein. In the gloom a lean and dapper guy stood up under the whirling planets with outstretched hand. "Please sit down, Joan, and I will spell it out. Coffee? Artemis, see to the detail.
That is Germanic,yes?" He flashed a gentle smile. Despite herself, Joan smiled. "And jokes?" His smile faded. "I will tell you a very bad joke, Joan, the worst." "Was that it?" She grinned slyly, sipping her coffee. "What? I don't get that atall, sorry. This is serious,a serious joke if one can say that. The fuhrer made ghe serious mistake of reading Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy' without reading the full title, which is 'The Birth of Tragedy..Out of the Spirit of Music'."
Joan stood up. "Thanks for the coffee, Max. I'm no right-wing aficionado but trying to con me with that rewritten title is cheap. I'm outta here." Max leapt up, fishing a book out of his pocket. "Here, look for yourself." Joan looked and saw in Germanic letters, 'The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music by Friedrich Nietzsche'. She sat down. "OK, I'm listening." "I know it sounds silly," continued Max seriously, "but it is everything. The joy of music is everything. The Brides of Hitler have already decided this, now your coming -" he paused for effect - "it is a sign. The sign we have been waiting for."
"Look," Joan said firmly. "What is it you want? World War 3?" Max stared at her. "You guessed! That seems to prove we were correct about you." Joan made to get up again and Max laid a hand gently on her left shoulder. "Please," he pleaded, "give me 1.1 minutes." Joan sighed and sat down. "1.1 it is. You're just lucky it wasn't 1.234." "Ha ha. You are so, so..Joan." He checked his watch. "Right. So why does this 'joke' lead to WW3?" "You are very direct. We want you be a because you are what you are. There is nothing standard I your songs. It is liquid, o so liquid." Again he flashed a quick smile. "And WW3?" Max took a breath and looked at his watch. "In half a minute, this is the story. Hitler was wrong in his racial theories because he did not fully read the title," gesturing. "Music is not in itself intellectual, we have since realized. It is pure joy, the freeing of spirit. One cannot have Tragedy without spirit. It is just farce." He stood up, leaning across the table.
"Joan, music enables one to release the intellect. The form comes first. Hitler was trapped by his blunder. Please perform for the Neu Fatherland." Joan hesitated. "Well..what about the Jewish question?" "Have you heard the latest Dylan album?"* "Good point."
"Not only that," continued Max, "we have forecasts for the next century, forecasts of ungodly oscillations. We have studied your arrangements. Your drumbeats are stately, measured.." He drummed with both fists on his heart in a slow syncopation. T-tum, t-tum, t-tum.. "Lovers Rock," breathed Joan. He had her.
"With what ungodly repetitions is the future facing? The black and brown, the Asian must rise up..and this time we are with them! Then, our factories will supply them, the Rhine Valley, it'll be the hippest war in history."
Max sat back down. "The war was only half finished. We have a space-ship hidden on the Dark Side of the Moon. Think, Joan, a mistress of the New Order in space. Your songs will be used.." "No!" Joan threw her coffee aside. "I can't be used. I'm sorry, I have to be myself or I'm no one."
She hurried off past the detail, pushed through the door..and paused. Was she right to let the chance go? She'd always been pro LGBT. Suddenly, she heard drumbeats in her head. She'd made the right decision. The song, she had the perfect song. Dreamily, she ambled out. The song was what counted. Only the song.
*this bad taste gag is in honour of K West
JA makes a numerical gag at start of this 1976 broadcast
[Liquido are a German electro-pop outfit famed for Narcotic. They have a slightly misanthropic trend with tracks like Ordinary and Standard. If their churlisness is anti-modern, modernism can be taken as the era of fact. As usual, it depends if the facts are right. Goethe even took offence at Newton's empirical research on light. Not all things are factual because they are transformative. If we only know facts we are hidebound, bound to one view. Artists such as Armatrading and Howard are self-taught and always learning. Alan Moore in 'Blood from the Shoulder of Pallas' points to fact making poetry invisible. If there are two sorts of thought, learning invokes the development of psyche, and fact the suppression. Learning is exciting while fact is boring. In other words, a civilization built on fact might not actually be right and is not good for the psyche. Assuming the psyche is imbued by the physical, there is the sense of fluidity in transformation and growth that is not factual. Fluid movements occur in a medium, possibly aether according to UVS website. ] This might link to Dec1 post 'it depends if you're an optimist or a pessimist'. Facts aren't always relevant because it depends on the physical universe. If the universe is actively shapely then love could play a large role. One likes something and has affections. Promoters of 'fact' have to persuade us that things are the other way round and that number, logic, information can get whatever we want. But that is a parallel reality without the shapeliness. Nietzsche would say there is a constant battle between Apollo and Dionysus that neither 'wins'.
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 5, 2024 9:42:27 GMT -5
Shamans are transformative people occupying a transformative world. Animal shapes, the wavering outlines of a log fire, the crackling, spitting sounds. All the quivering physical movements have a psychic influence. A flame with its slow, variable oscillations serves to harmonise thoughts (The Norse Shaman, Evelyn Rysdyk.) The shapeliness of natural phenomena shapes thought processes in the belief in spirits.
The harmonic, the spirit, the musical. Fire of course is also a technology, but is an uncontrolled source of power (as in a steel forge.) Controlled fire (or electricity) is still destructive, but in a controlled form.
What I basically mean is that everything has to be powered up. I was reading Nnedi Okorafor's alien contact novel Lagoon, and it was noticeable how reliant the characters were on their chargers and mobile phones. This is no doubt realistic, but I noticed the Nigerian demons (who oppose the aliens) are portrayed as CGI monsters. A snake-like road, a shambling 3-storey totem. I didn't see any reference to witch doctors, drums or the 'typical' African fair.
Drumbeats are an original sound, raw and primitive, muscular and positive. Nnedi's Nigerians are so in thrall to their technology everything is seen through the prism of a mobile phone screen, camera. What that does is put things into a head-oriented space, 'news' (the ending is a news-stream of the bio-ship.)
That is a recipe for boredom; added to that is the idea that the acoustic becomes part of the technological/mobile phone industry. Music is no longer a physically harmonic drumbeat but a part of the digital sphere (sine wave, see Robin James.)
I do like other Okorafor sci-fi/superhero books such as The Book of Phoenix, but this seems more like a capitulation to the head-based future that destroys the shapeliness of nature.
Shamans or let's say musicians who are self-taught, have thought-processes that are free of the information, news-driven industries. Musucal harmony is physical; digital information takes one out of the physical into a new harmony of information (frequency curves.) Most information is not that exciting or dramatic; it's going to be boring unless the aliens do land, which doesn't seem likely.
Footnote If harmony is the acoustic sine wave or frequency curves of information, that clearly is a parallel reality of data, our digital world of number. Data is simply not exciting, and is not original.
The origin is the harmony of numbers or something of that order (Pythagoras.) Number not as data but as something original. Along the same lines, neo-Darwinian evolution can't be an origin because it is only data (DNA.)
The origin probably has a tendency to fluid lines that harmonise quite well. Haeckel's 'Artforms in Nature' goes out to deliberately see the Art Nouveau forms in sealife, and is almost as exciting as an alien invasion. Things don't have to be boring and we need artists like JA to remind us we are human beings with inner lives and psyche that is creative in itself.
(Neo-Darwinists and neoliberals must think data is something other than what it is, which points to these harmonised data-flows or what Robin James terms the sine wave. The alternative view is that data is exactly that, useful but not harmonic.
Taking the JA symphony as a musical example, there are repeated phrases, different instruments. That is a type of melodic theme and variation. It's musical but not that complicated, the arrangement is key. The feeling.
By contrast, data is inherently complicated. It could be a photograph, a video, and is equally represented by a code (numbers in the digital sphere.) There is no underlying simplicity, theme or variation. That can only come from something harmonic like chords, overlapping melodies. The digital sphere can represent anything, but cannot have the harmonic simplicity of music. The same would apply to any other data like DNA. Whatever it represents is not simple; it can't be simplified, it is inherently complex (Noble seems to accept this view.) Trying to find harmony in such a complex area is simply to enter a parallel area, one of data flows analogous to the acoustic sine wave of frequency curves.
Musical arrangements and feeling would also seem to imply that something like memory would have a feeling attached to it. Our memories are not data corresponding to a computer's. We don't remember data; we recall colours, sensations, actions, shapes, sensual areas.
We use data to record things on our machines so it seems the sanm3 could apply to biology. Organisms are very efficient creations. The data is a recording, not the thing itself. A DVD only has meaning when we view it through our senses and view other things with senses. The confusion of recording or data with reality or action (feeling) seems apparent. The fact one can record say Lovers Speak on a CD doesn't mean there is any relation between the data and the feelings on the acoustic. There are two different realities and trying to connect them is a recipe for confusion, bordering on lies.
PS Linear A is the indecipherable Minoan script. None of the words in Linear A correspond to those in Linear B (archaic Greek), so there is no context for translation (it's thought to be a storage list.) While DNA is not a language, it still applies that there may be no context for translation. What that means is DNA can only be interpreted as pure data and nothing more meaningful. Any attempt to harmonise frequency curves of data has to be a parallel reality.
The best one can say is probably that data and the thing it represents don't have to have any relation whatever. But since DNA is organically related that means there must be a connection. But it may not be possible to translate this into fact, it could simply be the physical sense of harmonious activity.
JA says "I am what I am", and there's a limit to the amount one can describe things scientifically. As Alan Moore says in 'Blood from the Shoulder of Pallas', the poetic essence is lost. If one describes things musically or rhythmically, that is legitimate. Science can do without all that and end up with false descriptions. The harmonised data-flows may simply be a way of justifying the description.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 8, 2024 6:57:59 GMT -5
1-45 mins in
If we're reaching the end of a phase of civilization, it's unlikely that the average man will notice any difference. Nothing is likely to change until suddenly everything does. Elon Musk speaks for the average man when he says, "In time we can genetically reprogram DNA using AI" (paraphrased).
This is what Octavia Butler refers to as the extrapolation from present trends. We can edit genes so why not program? But this implies a linear process of simply increasing memory-capacity and capability.
The process is clearly not linear but circular, each organ is s separate circle with a separate function. If you look at it as a product, you ould ask, 'When is a product useful?' Only when it's finished, when the arrangement is harmonised.
Why is it that Black women like Butler or Armatrading talk sense, when the average man/Musk talks nonsense? Because they are thinking technologically and not biologically. Desires and hungers apply to people not machines. The average Musk-man analogizes DNA to a program since that is the era we're in. But a programis a linear creation, while a creature is numerous interweaving circles. Each circle is an original universe unto itself.
The predictability of average-Musk msn comes from linear thinking. But we shouldn't trust linear thinking because it serves the status quo. Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy (or Lilith's Brood) is all about the mistrust of alien-derived genetic changes and the treachery of hybrids.
It's much more likely that history is circular, as imbalances are corrected by mistrust and desire for other things, other ways. But it won't come from the average man, more likely from eccentric women, and inheritors of a Black culture that mistrusts dominant white culture. They are talking sense while the rest are still in thrall to the infinite loop of linear thought.
'My mind whirls Wanders around desires' Bjork, Thunderbolt from Biophilia (uses the language of DNA to funnel her desires)
'If people are imperfect enough to destroy their minds, perhaps they cannot perfect the (corrective) procedure that allows them to do so.' Bethany Morrow, 'Mem' chapter 4
Notes on 'The Norse Shaman', Evelyn Rysdyk It might seem at first glance that nerdish sci-fi has little in common with shamans. However, Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy is full of shamanic lore, so she has to count as both. 'Adulthood Rites' is set in a mangrove type area of Earth where Lilith and others return to their roots literally by making use of herbal lore. This is probably a Black inheritance (though Butler went to South America to research the forest.)
CH1 Rysdyk is very big on trance-states induced by flickering flames of a fire. Where there is intense darkness one is enveloped in a globe of light; the flame has a stroboscopic effect on brain states. One can assume that trance-states rewire the brain to create many interconnections. It is a creative state akin to artwork. So one can probably say a shaman sees nature as an artform first, a whole, finished product (ps Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon uses candlelight to artistic effect, Grace Slick in her memoir makes similar allusions to history.)
CH2-5 Investigations of burial sites reveal usually female shamans, and the female power is associated with cycles of rebirth. There are various exercises of lighting a ritual fire and gazing into it (along with drum and rattle) to meet entities such as the first shaman. Fire and flame are clearly associated with meditative states taking one out of the present, dreamstate (cf Grace Slick's song Hyperdrive.)
CH6 is on the Norns, especially Urd whose name is related to 'turn'. The Norns are ancestral to the gods and reside at the base if Yggdrasyl by a sacred well. The power of weaving Fate is primordial (Rysdyk goes into some quantum physics mumbo jumbo,) ignoring the quanta, the tree as a cosmic spiritual entity connecting planes of existence is accessed via ritual fire, drum.
CH7,8 is a lot on the Norse epic Eda. She also notes Frea was the original shaman, interceder. This is often via songs for the spirits (of Yggdrasyl.) I have to disagree with the quanta idea that formless consciousness can become form; song and repetitive chants are creative acts. Nothing formless about that.
CH9,10 on shamanic ritual of seidr (seer.) She makes the interesting point that a seer carries a staff representing Yggdrasyl and thereby stands in the spiritual centre of the universe. 'Each point is its own centre'. That is more to my liking than the 'infinite mutability of Erlig'. A staff is twisted, crooked as a tree branch (serpentine.) The idea that spirit is in shape is important; quantum physics and the formless notions of science seem the exact opposite. In other words, consciousness and spirit are present in natural forms.
CH11-13 on seidr rituals, CH14 history. A general point I'd make is the seen and unseen worlds. Science cannot view the unseen world as it's literally impossible. So what is it? As she says, Odin is 'raven' and bears are 'messengers', so there are attributes that animals have that have a spiritual use as opposed to physical. Without the natural forms there could be no spirit. Similarly, Yggdrasyl represents a fundamental aspect of the spiritual universe.
CH15 Odin obtains the runes, a shamanic attribute. CH16 the world tree uniting living, spirit and ancestors. That's about it apart from the conclusion, Ragnarok or Renewal? I'd just make the point that anything in nature that is used is a finished arrangement of many harmonious parts; it can't be reduced and becomes iconic. The world tree is almost a universal icon. Of course we use icons in modern culture, the sense of circular harmony maybe not. This is music in shape as opposed to some arbitrary harmonic of science.
In Defence of Nerds "'Mem' is, I would say, my normal voice..It's very much written as though you understand..I'm not going to do a bunch of expository dialogue or break in my story and the melody and pentameter of my story to be like, here's what's happening and here's what you need to know to understand this."
Bethany 'I'm not gonna belabor' Morrow. Nerds are to some extent self-taught as they're people who know they're good. They're not gonna lecture or teach you, just write or sing. To some extent, Rysdyk's conclusion was a lecture, and what if you disagree?
It's especially so of quantum physics as who understands it? It's clear Rysdyk is in favor of harmony, who isn't, but in fact everything that exists has to have a harmonic; you naturally see it in quanta too. But a natural form is not quantized, it is what you see, a physical shape.
When writers or poets write they write about what they see. They are not explaining some fact to you, they are perceiving a poetic reality on the page. That's I think what Morrow is getting at; even if she's writing about quanta she won't explain it because she's writing a story.
A story is about people and feelings so that's the reality. Whether it's Harlan Ellison, Morrow or Armatrading or Butler all the nerdish creators are saying the same thing in their own ways.It can't be reduced without imposing a new harmonic (the acoustic one associated with digital culture or possibly quantum computers, since quanta are statistical phenomena. The acoustic sine wave applied to statistical trends is exactly the area Robin James has been covering, the area of pretend people.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 11, 2024 6:31:19 GMT -5
Definitions..
First off, a quantum computer uses vector math incorporating amplitude probabilities, so it's essentially a waveform computer. In the quanta-world, probabilities can be calculated, whereas in the biological world there are stochastic flows of information (genes) inside cells.
'Stochastic', 'having a random probability distribution that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted PRECISELY' (my emphasis)
So there is a powerful difference between between information (in computers) and information in biology because the latter can't be predicted, it's indeterminate.
What you could say is that quantum computers establish a metaphysical condition that probability can be calculated. That might push scientists to analyse stochastic flows in nature in an attempt to predict them.
Scientists have a tendency to say, 'quantum is classical' (physics) because it is all one reality. But Robin James has pointed out the different measures of harmony by neoliberals to the Greeks. 'The Greeks measured harmony geometrically as a proportion' (Dec 28), while neoliberals measures sine wave in frequency curves of data.
So neoliberalism is already a waveform, while the Greek/classical measure is proportion. Where there is proportion, data-flows cannot be predicted because it is an organic system running in circles that are mutually interdependent (overlapping, as Faraji says of music styles in history.)
Sociologically, this could easily bring-in comments by Bethany Morrow. In a long interview on PRReview she specifically says the White dominated society has no racial origin, it is more of an ideology. * This could mean a type of head that is comfortable with capital economics.
At the same time, Robin James says the use of math in a 'soundscape' (the physics of music) has moved probability statistics from the social to the mathematical sphere. People are numbers, and corporations 'create a symphony from the noise of accumulated data'.**
It's not a racial thing, it's to do with the physics of sound applied to data. This is almost a metaphysical condition. Therefore, the measure of harmony (as frequency distributions) is key to the reality. It's not racial, but it is capital, neoliberal dominance
One can't rebel from this without becoming racial, and this is precisely what Morrow does. She is a Black woman representing Black women. The dominant culture is White, but that could be simply owing to the numbers. The culture is not racial, but a metaphysics of number (sound.)
In the 60s, White bands like Jefferson Airplane (as well as Alan Wilson, Bear Hite znd orhers) overlapped znd took up the mantle of Black blues performers who had been marginalised.
This is clearly a proportionate harmony where the are intersecting lines of development, and no statistical control (by the physics of sound or a new harmonic.)
So, the new acoustic harmony is a dismantling of society az overlapping, mutually interdependent parts, places. It's not specifically racial, but a statistical ideology. Whites cannot rebel, while Black's can bey becoming more Black.
* I misrepresented Morrow owing to a contextual error. Here is her quote (45 mins.) She is talking about the difference between 'Mem' and the YA fantasy 'Song Below Water', where the topic is the demonisation of Black women. With 'Mem'
"I wrote an author's note saying it was not historically accurate and omitted the power-structure of whiteness..It's a discussion topic but it's not something I was willing to belabor the story with."
My mistake, still I'll leave it up as a discussion topic. it's interesting a writer can choose to ignore certain topics. Yes, Blackness and Whiteness are topics but both races are impacted by the Sam society. There is the historical accuracy of race, there is the present technology and there is the future. Both her books cover the entire spectrum.
The Question (Ditko?)
Sorry about the major blunder; sometimes from errors things emerge. Morrow was certainly exasperated at 'The Hunger Games' which is an open rebellion by Whites against dystopia when in real life any rebellion by Blacks is met by disdain. Blacks have grievances so this is necessary for rebellion. The problem with grievances is if they are metaphysical it is very difficult to pin them down. In the 60s it was rearranging of the mainstream competitive ethos with personal ethics. If the actual perception of reality by the elites goes against a personal response, that is a metaphysical problem. (** The difference between quantum and classical physics is probability. It's because quantum physics is probabilistic that one can get from one to the other. See Zap physics: quantum to classical on YouTube. Similarly, an acoustic wave that is applied to particles (data) is probabilistic.)
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 14, 2024 9:54:09 GMT -5
"The use of math in a 'soundscape' has moved probability statistics from the social to the mathematical sphere." (Robin James) I want to treat James's quote in a philosophical way as it's a way of not getting into physics in a big way, and to point to some connections with Bethany Morrow.
The quote is saying that the social becomes the mathematical. Einstein has this quote about mathematicians.
"The human mind has first to construct forms independently before it can find them in things. Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore."
Einstein's view seems to have been that mathematics can be fantasy because it is logically true, not necessarily real. If there are significant results that give rewards you assume they are real. However, we have seen that quantum connects to classical because it is a probability.
The problem with the acoustic wave is that it cancels the social mathematically. In other words, it destroys reality if you view reality as primarily social (ie not as 'particles' or data analogous to quanta.)
We're really dealing with the 'forms" of society. "There's no way individual people are born in vacuum" says Morrow. This is clearly so historically. There are not only settler communes, but Morrow mentions the colony of fleeing Southern Blacks after the civil war established on Roanoke Island, NC (part of her 'Little Women' remix.)
As we know, the wild west was anarchic, and Roanoke on the East seems to conform to that stereotype. But we're talking about 'forms', which means the body-proportions, the ability to fight, and the psychic power to build a commune.
Form is not logical, it is proportionate. Agsun, 50s RnB pioneer Lloyd Price in his memoir sites the violent intimidation of New Orleans Whites bur also the desegregation of dance halls. Any place that is self-governing is run by low-level feuds and rivalries and also mutual rewards. It's not chaos, nor is it logic.
The problem I have is the people in contemporary society who are supposedly elite - Musk, Zuckerberg - in zny discussion of 'form' are far from intelligent. They can only deal with the logically 'true', not with contradictions of 'reality' which is composed of 'forms'.
Philosophically, they exist in a fantasy world of mathematics. Even if it appears real it has no formal basis, and form comes first. This leads directly onto imitations. The Philip K Dick story 'The Hanging Man' from 1953 is one of the first of these paranoid efforts. Are our elite actually ideological imitations as opposed to what they seem to be, which is intelligent White men? This theme is extremely prevalent in pulp culture. Just paranoid fantasy, delusions of conspiracy? Who knows.
Note on Form There are quite a few ideas on form, starting with Plato's Idealism, objects which are not seen but are the perfection of what is seen. There's the serpent shape that weaves indeterminately, taken to represent chaos. UVS-model website has a primordial vortex in aether.
There's also Idealism versus chaos. 'The Space Eater' by Frank Belknap Long is a pastiche of the Lovecraftian nameless, formless 'other' that well demonstrates the untold horror of that which is without form, but animate and cunning. Philip K Dick's 'Valis' is another very weird intelligence (Vast Active Living Intelligent System).
Anything that is formless bur intelligent seems to partake of evil or at least be highly negative. Robin James points out that averages of statistics are not physical things or people, only mathematical concepts.
The way I take it is that not only are there physical people, but historical social forms, especially communes, colonies, farmsteads or ranches (as in 'The High Chaparral.) Averages of people make the assumption that social forms do not exist or are not important.
One could also say that averages can become intelligent because they are data for the 'Symphony' of acoustic waves. The mathematical reality is intelligent but formless.
This math is found in the sine wave of harmony. Obviously the Greek idea of harmony is physical since it is based on ratios of musical instruments (see Robin James.) Sine wave harmony could be taken as mathematical fantasy that is convincingly intelligent.
But, again, it's not intelligent when it comes to discussing forms, since they don't exist. It's an odd type of intelligence that averages things to zero on the social scale. One could view it as an imitation that creates harmony where in fact none exists.
This points to two different types of intelligence. Greek harmony is based on ratios and proportion and therefore has to respect forms in nature. This means essentially the human figure as well as the psychic power or restraint (moderation.) What James calls neoliberal harmony averages things down to data and probability so it is essentially a logical or 'true' system. It will imitate the 'real' to fulfill its needs.
(Another way to put it is a logical system has a harmonic wave that imitates the 'symphonic'. However, a symphony orchestra is composed of individual instruments with trills and arpeggios. Someone like JA can play these electronically so they are in control of arrangements. The logical system turns this around so that there is no individual composition and in fact it's harmonising of 'noise'. A real symphony has harmonic instruments as a basis while an imitation symphony has noise, which is harmonised by the sine wave.
Scientifically-speaking, quantum physics can convert to classical, as was seen. So both are real to that extent. The sine wave is not quantized because it has to harmonise the data, which is noise. That's why it's imitation and cannot convert to reality.
The imitation has to be intelligent to harmonise the data. The harmonic resonance is equivalent to neoliberal intelligence (of the 'elite'), the type of logically true intelligence that is an imitation (not 'real'.)
-last para was wrong-
Two songs that seem to fit this topic are Twist in my Sobriety, and What's Up. Ironically, Tikaram's 1979 effort sounds nostalgic for an 18 year old. Nostalgic for what? For whatever Perry is singing about.
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 17, 2024 9:54:05 GMT -5
In a 1983 review of American Flagg! #2 by R Fiori, he states 'The theme is patriotism, but it's hard to see how that theme comes in unless it's this: the things to admire in America are not the Boy Scout virtues (democracy, equality, fundamental decency of its people etc.), but the state of quasi-anarchy that results when individuals are allowed to play out their private dreams in the real world.'
Getting to #3, he states 'As it happens..it turns out to be the fundamental decency stuff.. A more sophisticated observer might have seem that the bankers, fat-cats et al are just the most successful versions of the hustlers that appear on all levels of American society, or that the old solidarity had more to do with the peculiar tendency of Anericans to identify with their bosses rather than each other.'
It certainly is hard to think of the Wild West as 'fundamentally decent', let alone the Indian fate, so Fiori has a lot to recommend. Nevertheless, solidarity is something that comes across in old films and has a nostalgic quality.
While it's true that hustlers are more successful, the fabulous wealth of very few is a comparatively recent phenomenon that would seem to go against the patriotism of e pluribus unum.
The previous post points to a neoliberal type of brain, so one way to look at it is that this type of brain is anti-patriotic. The type of brain that is closed-off, shut behind a facade of inane comments. The brain is enclosed behind a facade similar to the leather-faced alien mummy in Lovecraft's Out of Aeons (with Hazel Heald.)
In order to determine what this brain is, certain questions have to be posed around the theme of neoliberal intelligence (as defined previously.) 1) What sort of intelligence is mathematical? 2) How mathematical is music? 3) What sort of intelligence resonates?
1) A counter to this is, 'What sort of intelligence is musical?' since the answer is JA. Her intelligence is felt, tactile, tangible and real, so her music is to do with feeling. The mathematical intelligence lacks feeling, and is logically true as opposed to real. This could manifest as a hardfaced fantasy.
2) The answer to this has to be that harmony is a mathematical proportion. Without the mathematical proportion we enter an alien math (the sine wave.)
3) An intelligence which uses the alien math. The math resonates with frequency curves of probabilities.
So the resonating intelligence of neoliberalism does not correspond to the old-style hustlers, fat-cats et al. Their brains are closed-off and inhabit alien math.
It's possible this alien math is the finished state of neoliberalism, since it has historically been used to open-up 'shut" economies - such as Bolivia. But the history of Bolivia is incredibly chaotic; Evo Morales carried on the reform but had a social agenda, especially of the indigenous people.
By 'closed economy' one can simply mean it is not entirely democratic but has a social agenda bordering on authoritarianism. The entirely open society simply invites in closed minds that are essentially alien to social norms.
'Neoliberal Resonance' I'm quite the fan of Blaxploitation films of the 70s. 'Cotton Comes to Harlem' (1971) has around 5 sets of social forces.. the Black militia, the Black rebel cops, the 'natives' of Harlem and the Reverend on an African-home agenda who swindles them, the White mafia. You'd have your work cut-out saying who is running things.
There's 'good and bad' in tradition as Tikaram's lyrics say. On the street there's a rich mix of snooker clubs, Swahili speakers, King fu..hip-hop makes use of this but there's a difference between street-culture and victimhood.
It's so diverse; the Reverend's African speech is reminiscent of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the comedy too. The funky home décor makes one want to move in immediately. The mutual rewards of the neighbourhood businesses are obvious. Mutual rewards are not part of the open society of Zuckerberg et al.
Where does Galt McDermott's score come from but these streets? It's harmony as opposed to 'resonance' of nameless people. There's good and bad there because there are overlapping forces. It's life. Not perfect harmony as that's an illusion. Musical.
(Watching Zuck's Congress hearing, he literally said people are advertizers. Says it all.)
Note Going back to Butler at top of prev post, it's noticeable how dismissive she is of the progressive wisdom trope of the West. She's certainly not convinced, instead it's more like fate. That's a traditional view, that fate is visible if you open your mind to the world. Ideology closes it off, all one sees is the ideology (which is invisible.) The contrary arguments of the world are fated to prevail.
Ideologists will not face hard choices because for them all is progressive in their scheme. No hard choices, no strong brew, no heavy themes. The strength of this argument is that you submit and don't allow for heavy discourse. Be it Dawkins, the trans people, neoliberals, discourse against the word is disallowed (somewhat like Manson.) However, discourse is two things acting together forming a sort of discordant harmony. The discourse produces music and the themes of the discourse.
Hard-and-fast rules rule out discourse and the enervating effects of anarchy, so the very success of neoliberal plurality - the harmonious resonance of plurality - is its failure.
(Dawkins' problem with the muscular OT is probably that the terrible winged creatures (angels) wouldn't give him time to open his mouth before they fed him to the wolves.)*
* Watched about a minute of 'The Bible is Appalling' where he says something like the Bible is moral but not true. So good and bad, love and hate are not true? That would change a fair chunk of history and leave predator without prey and vice versa.
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Post by neilnv2 on Jan 21, 2024 9:56:11 GMT -5
This is what is so mysterious about ideologists; they are slaves to weakness because their ego is convinced by logical 'truth'. They are forever building pyramids in their neverending sleep of morality. Everything that exists has to survive, so there you have a moral code of evolution for a start. One could say that survival is 'good', but there's always the snake in the garden, the 'bad'. Kindergarten stuff, so it must be that logic rules out discourse and the strength of discord with what is essentially a programmed resonance. This uses raw data or 'noise' to create the resonance. This could be DNA or it could be consumers; the chief fact is that the data has NO INTRINSIC HARMONY (this is what has been previously discussed as proportionate harmony of musical instruments, from Greek.) Thrush, Eagle, snake, all have proportionate harmony. In other words, in place of data there is intrinsic proportion where numbers are also proportionate (the 2:3 perfect 5th interval, Pythagoras.) Neoliberal resonance (Robin James) is simply the practical application of a wider scientific status quo of using raw data or 'noise' as basic building-blocks of knowledge. Dawkins with his 'memes' has the convictions of a logician, and that is the downfall of the slaves to ephemeral truths of data over the manly, muscular splendor of thematic song (or womanly, natch.)* (Quote from email from UVS-model: 'Every 3D object has the intrinsic spin of their 4D nested hypersphere..The 4D hypersphere is nevertheless a 3D structure; it merely is explicated as a form of 4D geometry as a result of their steady state form rendered by its inherent spin. A torus can be described as steady state 4D hypersphere that is formed with the intrinsic spin of two 3D spheres.' PS Vincent uses the term 'resonance' which I've expurgated for obvious reasons.) * NeoDarwinism = theory of natural selection + Mendel's theory of genetics + mathematical population genetics
One could breed statistically, eugenically, logically, but many things can't be explained by theory+data. For example, how does one swallow? The same way a snake oscillates, with perfect muscular coordination. If one can't swallow/breath/sing one wouldn't last a day let alone a million years. One is not breeding those things since they already are there, like whisps of mist that swirl around. One is not breeding but simply going for what one likes in a creative, spontaneous fashion, natural woman, natural man irregardless of race, family. Octavia Butler. If superpowers did exist one could selectively breed them, and this is the theme of Butler's 'Patternist' series, though one of Doro's spawn succeeds in killing him. There are many other sometimes contrary themes in her books, such as the rebellious Black female - rebellion from slavery to the program - voodoo and herbalism. 'Xenogenesis' trilogy charts the treachery of hybrid alien bio-engineers who breed humans into extinction. The strength of the protagonists in Butler's books often seems to be a function of racial antecedents, so this could be a contrary element to the selectivity of Doro/aliens. The thematic richness is to me what makes the books fascinating, rather than the scientific assumptions which are part of her fantasy universes (as one could say of classic X-Men.) Parallel evolution Hopefully the San Fran psychedelic poster is visible as it doesn't show on my phone. Starting with the snake link, the comment saying "it's inherent" is apposite; being coiled round a branch just comes naturally. Coiling comes naturally; proteins coil into 3D shapes and coil round DNA. Coiling is 100percent spontaneous (and difficult to predict); it literally just happens. So, how much of what is called evolution or development is literally spontaneous? Anything spontaneous can't be selectively bred; they are simply preexisting and do their thing. There is a discourse and dialogue between the coiling and shape-shifting particles in the cells of the body. In other words, to detach this away from the 'data' (DNA) is to do without the totally spontaneous assembly of shapes. If the universe is actively shapely then things should be seen in the context of the shapely (Jan1, also Haeckel.) Seeing things out of context prioritises data; but this could easily be the wrong data (Dec30) because it is so much 'noise'. From here, it's easy to see where Robin James' 'Neoliberal Resonance' comes from (harmonising noise, or consumer data) and more widely the established scientific statistical mathematics (of populations as opposed to shapely things.) James's hypothesis points to a 'formless intelligence' that is paralleled in weird fantasy of the alien (Jan14.) The intelligence will imitate reality by means of acoustic sine waves or resonance of data that imitate the symphonic but are mathematical. The mathematical resonance will dismantle social forms such as communes, colonies (Jan14.) The social situation let's say in the 60s had overlapping zones such as the psychedelic White bands and the Black blues performers. The anarchic creativity was a vital tonic that was a totally spontaneous development of feeling, love, beauty, thoughtfulness (psyche.) One shouldn't really be fooled that intelligent and ethical types of people can't fashion their own societies without the need for flows of data (consumer noise) that have no intrinsic harmony, and are given a semblance of respectability by an intelligence that is really destructive of said societies (the more that is dismantled the more one needs things, but one doesn't necessarily want them.) This is a screen I had made of repeated images of JA. It seems that the forms contain abstract shapes that are fascinating, maybe not to the level of Andy Warhol.* There is a vast amount of information in the abstract shapes that are self-assembled from the forms, and clearly the less determined the forms are the more the shapes have an arrangement (a design that is not pre-determined.) Also, the mode of recording the data is irrelevant since there is no real relation to the abstract patterns here. Where there is self-assembly, the mode of data is much less relevant and this will increase with the form as it gets arranged. ..Physically one might say the abstract shapes don't have vectors - which give distance and direction. In biology, proteins physically bind to molecules using their shape, ie the shape is the chemical function. Hence, that could be a vector. But an abstract shape is just the spaces between things or around them. It contains information related to arrangement, not necessarily to movement (nice shoes though.) * Warhol's series of prints set out to resemble assembly-lines, often as a grid. That is a definite abstraction rather than the image itself (as on a comicbook page.) That sort of begs the question whether abstraction is needed in nature and art. Warhol set out to have no abstraction but ended up having it anyway. There is bound to be a lot of abstraction in RNA-transcriptase as there is in an assembly-line factory, as it is just repeating the steps blindly. By abstraction one could mean number and shape, so if one adds a harmonic (a physical ratio) it's getting biological (form.) Warhol does add this through his artistry with colour and subtle nuances. In my screen of JA I just had alternate color/b&w (a regular beat.) So anything that departs from total repetition could be art of a type. Essentially, a copy or a recording is not abstract since it is just information (a painting that copies a photo is not art.) The information does not contain much of use. Abstraction contains a lot that is useful basically because things do have an abstract quality. An African mask, a psychedelic poster. I don't suppose that was Warhol's intention, but the expressive mask is one interpretation. In any case, any slight deviation from repetition seems to have an organic feel. He did call his place 'Factory', right? (I wonder if Warhol fully realized when he began how artistic a geometrical grid could be? The mechanical repetition is not pedantic; Greek potters or any old artist's studio would have mechanical habits. What is unartistic is pedantic copying because there is no abstract information there. If Warhol sort of learnt on the job it makes his work even greater; the mechanical repetition is not intellectual as pedantic copying would be. It is just a grid that allows artistic layering. Biologically, a polymerase is repeating itself constantly, building a grid of information over time; the actual mechanism allows for layering.)
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