Thoughts: Is Pointlessness The Point Of Music?

Sorry to bother you all. I'll stick to doing this sort of thing privately in future with people who will talk to me, or with me, rather than at me. Be seeing you.

We use powerful music also sometimes not because it gets to real actual feeling but because it MASKS real actual feeling, mimics yet evades it, turns it gently aside into a lie we can get by with: it's theatre, it's fiction, it's distraction — untruth also is where its power lies, and its urgent sudden value. If I were mourning Rob now I'd play Mel and Kim's "Fun Love Money", because he didn't live to hear it and he'd have loved it, and Mel and Kim were funny-silly disco-gonk girlies that early death divided, and why can't something like that be how I get to what mattered between Rob and me? At the thing that neither of us remotely knew or understood at the time, which was that everything trivial and fast-moving, just trash and fluff and bad TV, was saner and safer and better mutual territory than so mch either of us still (secretly) considered "of consequence", in music or out of it.

scott 4, on the other hand, doesn't seem proper as it verges on the ridiculous -- one of its virtues, true -- far too often.

i've found, from my grievous experiences in the past, that music can help, that it doesn't hinder. it's cathartic, i think, especially if you wail along with it, let it all out. i've shed foolish tears while bleating "she's out of my life" and tears that've left scars to the unifics' "the beginning of my end," probably the most depressing soul song of all time.

music's there for me when i'm happy and i've never seen why it can't be there when i'm upset. if music is a part of your daily routine, it's best to keep it there, to try to adhere to "normalcy" as much as possible. music is manipulative, but in situations like this, i think the trick is to make it yield to you, to adjust to fit your needs.

I somehow had it in the back of my head that Wyatt might have been thinking of Mongezi Feza, except I think Mongs was still alive by the time "Ruth" was released (he even appears on one track). Had it been recorded after Mongs had died, and had it been Louis Moholo at the kit, it would of course have taken on a completely different significance (see "Blue Notes for Mongezi" - a record too painful for repeated listening, but one which must be listened to at least once).

Also thought of the SME's "Let's Sing For Him (March for Albert Ayler)" - which coincidentally also has Laurie Allan on board, as one of four drummers - from the perspective: well, none of these people ever KNEW Ayler; he was simply an easy point of reference for some grief which may or may not have been heartfelt (especially when you look at some of the other people in the line-up - Karl Jenkins, the Pyne brothers, Ron Mathewson, the future Spice Girls vocal tutor - nobody's idea of do-or-die hardcore freers).

But yes Mark, better to float with the fluff than drown with the deep. Couldn't agree more.

OK, the example here's a sidestep into a separate emotional territory and situation, but actually that may be helpful: clearer because not quite glued up in relevance. When I wuz struck aged 36 and no days with Unrequited Love pah bah (don't do this at home kidz for it suXoR: good tho for losing weight), I used the mid-period Beatles a lot, esp. Rubber Soul. You sing along with it, you kid yerself it's very insightful on romance and self-pity and so are you of course: after a while you sneakily realise that what you most like and are in sync with is the patent Lennon malice and menace built in under the surface of a lot of the songs. This swimmy self-pity has more than a leetle HOSTILITY worked into it. Hola.

OK: point being, Beatles songs-for-all-the- world worked as mass outreach by being bivalent in this kinda way, you got two or more strands of attitude, and yr subconscious gets to choose. Well it ain't just true of the Fabs, obv, and it ain't just true of Pitiful Adolescent Blue Crushes entered into when adolescence is long fled, and excuses are not to hand.

but all things considered, i'd rather be playing chic.

Which I think by extrapolation has ramifications for Marcello's original q: things that felt like utter expressivity suddenly reveal themselves to be oneself just posing, playing at expression; and maybe sometimes vice versa. And with time it'll switch, maybe, possibly.

and more: i've made mixtapes of different emotions: joy, depression, wonderment, anguish, etc.

good thread

how so?

IS POINTLESSNESS THE POINT OF THIS THREAD? LOLOLOLOLZ

lol Dom revive

mark s is right about rubber soul.

my whole life is tied to music. there were albums I had to go without listening to for long spells because they reminded me of a very unhappy spell in my life and listening brought it all crashing back.

Faith No More's Angel Dust reminded me of the time I was on antidepressants. I hated not listening to that!

Is pointlessness the point of ILM?

"All Art is quite useless" -- Oscar Wilde

Reminiscent of sole acid trip taken, Saturday 30 January 1982, somewhere between Milton Keynes and St Neots. Lots of snow and sun.

-- Marcello Carlin, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (6 years ago) Link

LIVEBLOG THAT SHIT

i'm calling bullshit on oscar wilde.