LYRICS

The applications are to blameAll the people do all dayIs stare into a phone (Placebo, Too Many people)

“Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!” (Chief Seattle)

When rock stars were myths (Sandi Thom, I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker)

Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, Now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time (Moondog)

Time is an illusion (Einstein)

Sunday 25 April 2021

Pictorial 165

 Spontaneity and anarchy are expressive qualities. The throat grows physically and allows the vulgarity of expression (psyche).

The physical is always the domain of the vulgar, and the throat is beyond subtle as an instrument of expression.

The half-truth we (or "they") seem to live takes away all.of that in the interests of tidiness. An inert, sterile order.

The quasi-scientific nature of the mainstream is seen in UK pop celeb Stacey Solomon's fridge (just google it). It's clear here that number and straight-lines are the only things visible.

The exact same trend is seen in the projected desert city of Neom (or in solid-state electronics, natch). It's essentially a type of nothingness that is also very convincing to the ego.

Whether it's Solomon or bin Salman, they are followers of the same mirror of illusions of acolytes of pure reason (didn't Kant kill that off?)

The insane man is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason. (GK Chesterton)

We live in the world of the ego that suppresses natural spontaneity and expressive anarchy. It's really a world of half-truths that is somewhat up itself a la Solomon.

Truth is often found in physical situations. Modern pop is essentially descended from African rhythms and I guess the primitive-sounding call-and-response chants of Southern cotton pickers.

Life lived physically has got to be more primitive than our world of the mind (or AI). By the same token, it is both truer and alsp more amenable to development.

Whereas AI is a dead-end of straight-line tidiness, African rhythms have a physical strength that lends itself to sophistication. That seems to partly explain the reliance of pop on the African. As Carlos Santana said (P163), it is both sensual and spiritual.

It must be true to say that European folk music is also a physical style of playing, but at this point the African has become more dominant (I guess for the reasons Lloyd Price discussed previously).

This is easily seen in bands like The B52s (Love Shack), who are both highly sophisticated and clearly descended from group vocals of cotton pickers. Even I would say that the electro-synth of Gary Numan (Are Friends Electric) has a funky-sleaze that is more African than European.

From the sultry splendor of Minnie Riperton (prev) to the electro-dub sophistry of Lee 'scratch' Perry

EVIL BURMA (sinister track on the paranoid junta from 2009's Return to Planet Dub, feat Ari Up)

Numan married a 'super fan' who had followed his band, and Gemma is refreshingly bawdy. In an interview she described Numan's spell of poverty. "I had to give him a pity shag at one time," she recalled.

I like thst type of sordid, free and easy repartee. Grace Slick is another of that type. What these types do, whether you call them.hippies or nor, is express the physical side of things in relatively subtle and sophisticated ways.

Life lived physically inside the instrument of the body is relatively spontaneous and anarchic. Karen Gillan of Avengers fame expressed something similar in this quote.

I'd say to young women in their 20s, enjoy your body that you're in. You only get one. I feel.like in our 20s we're like 'Eugh' and now that I'm in my 30s I'm like, 'I looked great'

The body is beyond subtle, if yoy consider the throat allows us to swallow food, drink wine, cough, expel matter, sing, breath, save your life. That entire physical universe is spontaneous and anarchic and cannot possibly be under the control of routines as it exists in time.

Bruce Lee used similar arguments in his philosophy of Jeet Kune Do (see rehsongcycle.com currently in suspension).

We live in a world of routine that is highly convincing (to the ego), but it is full of half-truths spouted by scientist-automatons, the likes of Dawkins. Coming out of the scientific shell is to enter the body as a physical instrument of subtlety and action.

The truths of that universe have their sordid side (see Aristophanes comedies, prev). Without the full-on subtlety and action of the body in social-physical situations, all the truths we get are half-truths because there is essentially no spontaneity.

Gwyneth Paltrow gets stick but she is at least trying to be free and easy in a world that is all.head and no body (strength). Trying to be a hippy in a world of soulless artefacts of the scientific order of reason over pleasure. Spontaneity gives the lie to scientific convictions simply owing to the organic strength of physical squalor. In that old-time world - seen in Arabian souks or Howard's Hyboria - there is both dirt and cleanliness. 

Exposure to pathogens is good and strong and cleansing. Bathing cleanses body and spirit. This is simply the age-old way of living in the subtlety and strength of the spontaneous body.

African rhythms have taken over possibly because they express something we have lost. The instrument of the body should not allow itself to be forever taken and held prisoner by the faulty instrument of the western mind (since Newton, prev.)

The mirror is a hypnotic illusion we need to break, almost like Conan does in 'The Black Hound of Vengeance' (HB20)