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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
the other thing is that speakers of "foreign" languages process music in english primarily as music and only secondarily as lyrics, in other words, you could replace the lyrics with a good mumble and it would sound the same to a lot of us. cadence in language is what conveys the emotional content ("tone"), and my hypothesis is that melody in music derives from cadence in language, i.e., it takes the pure emotion out of language processing and runs with it. you don't need words, you can just hear the tone and get what's going on (this is what janacek pursued in some piano works). this way to un-hear words is really well illustrated in a mexican novel from the 60s about kids forming their bands and singing in english and they make up these shit words that sound like english but aren't-- eh, it's a hilarious book, josé agustín's "de perfil". anyway this is why i hate pavement btw, the music does nothing for me even though the lyrics supposedly speak to a certain group of people-- but i am not those people… anyway i rant...)
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this is undoubtedly true or very close to the truth. i suppose music is so exhilarating because by giving us the form of words without the actual linguistic content, we can have an experience that's almost like the words themselves being liberated from all the rules and realities that depress us.
pavement are singing about being a middle class person and shopping and having no obligations to anything but consumerism. that's what i hear anyway.
one time i tried to get punks practising in my attic to sing the first page of finnegans wake when they couldnt come up with lyrics, but they weren't impressed.
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Originally Posted by £$%^*
i just watched alexander payne's "nebraska" -- great fucking movie. almost a documentary. yes, this story has some sort of redemption narrative whereas real life generally doesn't, so if you can separate that fairytale in a different box and pretend it's a kind of ethnography, it reads as a documentary about a very depressing country--much, sounds to me, like the airless spaces you describe (though not quite as poor). mang, i know the smell of those american living rooms where the tv is on all day… i could almost smell it while watching. i also know those empty conversations where everyone looks at the tv… so weird.
there's another thing though that reminds me of freud… i can't find the quote but he said something along the lines that the basic elements of life were so fucking boring we had to make things up to keep us distracted from it. so it's not just capitalism, really. emptiness precedes ideology-- makes it necessary, actually. something to dream about-- redemptions, utopias, fantastic struggles, etc.
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emptiness is one of the highest states you can attain in buddhism yet in the west its borderline evil.
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Originally Posted by %$£"!"£!
also for those who read spanish you don't need to read beatriz preciado in translation. look for TESTO YONQUI. there's also a bunch of interviews she's done in spanish as well. i think she's in part delusional (as all philosophers must be), but she's super-smart and seems worth reading.
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delusional?
the english translation has just been released - everyone should go buy it - can't recommend it highly enough - best work of theory in years. if i had 2 copies i'd be filling one with underlines and stars and exclamation marks.