#138

You contain multitudes. Don’t give up. Your music will be transformed by what you’re experiencing now, and it will become even more essentially “yours” in the process.

Be well, cheers.

16 Likes
#139

For me, the ‘occult’ is an active connection between the present and the past. It manifests in DNA and all sorts of phenotypes, and how individuals act in various states of awareness thereof.

Perhaps that’s sort of what William Faulkner meant by ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’

I cannot understand how I’ve made what I’ve made.

4 Likes
#140

the dutch allegorical still life school is where my brain goes in trying to digest this post sticking with me over months.

#141

@dude

you should check out Johan Hermsen here’s a compilation of some of his work, he’s a Dutch artist still active today. He’s the closest thing to a continuation of the school you’re referencing. everything is modern art over here now.

Occultism in general leaves it’s followers prone to ego, either in overvalueing knowledge and the pursuit of it, as well in the perceived ways a practice can influence one’s life or the world as a whole.

There’s churches within occultism that I feel have legitimacy as a spiritual school, but I would not join any.

Which are sweeping personal statements, not general trueisms.

When it comes to modular, yeah how do you see your role as an active or inactive pursuer of art?

4 Likes
#142

Quite an intriguing question you pose.

If there is an esoteric leaning to my modular patching, it is probably closer along the lines of Shamanism. I can make patches that guide me along a visual quest, towards moods or thoughts that are sometimes comfortable, and sometimes disturbingly “broken spaces.”

Upon such quests, I sometimes consciously try to steer towards peaceful and melodic outcomes. Other times, I accept and invite guidance towards the discordant, towards the chaotic, the harmful.

You have hit a nerve with the question though. I’m not sure how aware I have ever been about how some patches affect me mentally, or spiritually.

Thanks for the “question of guidance” !

1 Like
#143

I’ve visited a lot of art museums in my day. I’ve seen a huge amount of art inspired by Christian “mumbo-jumbo”

The art is beautiful, but it is inspired by fictitious religious beliefs inflicted upon easily swayed primitive cultures by the Roman Empire.

Is it any less beautiful? No.
Is it any less “Mumbo-Jumbo”? No.

There is no point in trying to encourage or discourage beliefs. The power of belief has nothing to do with “your opinion” and everything to do with “personal belief”

If you want to take it to the fullest description, let’s try to define “reality”
Your “reality” has very little to do with my “reality” - from the mere sake that we have lived completely different lives in different parts of this tiny insignificant planet.

None of us know two $hits about reality, about what each of us believe, what we were indoctrinated with in our childhoods… In my experience , those who carve out their own beliefs are taking control over their own reality. As long as that doesn’t end in bloodshed (like most of the “approved” belief systems of planet Earth) I say live and let live.

And… Enjoy!

2 Likes
#144

One thing that’s been troubling me a great deal – perhaps my concerns are unfounded, or maybe i’m the only one struggling with this…

The problem (and I’m emphasizing a problem for me personally) is there’s still a huge emphasis, both in this thread and in the culture at large, on movements of the 1970’s… which is to say those derived from the 1960’s counterculture.

while the developments of the 1970’s have indeed been significant, and the tireless work of people like erik davis and john coulthart in transmitting/popularizing these developments should not be denied, the constant emphasis on this period does not help the visibility of so many developments ‘of’ the 1990’s-2010s, [I say ‘of’ because their time still has not yet really come]… which have been from the outset thoroughly integrated with the digital, and which intersect with totally new forms of expression basically never mentioned here.

it also goes without saying that the typical person in these communities has neither an idea of nor cares for any of this 1970’s stuff, at least this is the response i’ve gotten in these communities when i’ve tried to suggest a link… but this is not really a criticism, i think they have legitimately demonstrated that there is no need for this history. erik davis in one sentence as much as acknowledged this… (I think in the techgnosis afterword published also in LARB…?) but this acknowledgement was never developed.

so in a way, fine, i guess… generation gaps happen all the time.

what makes this particularly problematic for me personally, and what essentially makes things come full circle with the topic of this thread, is what jeremy deller observed in that the role of music for the older generation has been taken over by social media for the younger. i mean as a broad stage where legitimate cultural issues actually play out.

and it’s been plain for over a decade, maybe two, that music no longer has this role [almost exactly coinciding with the rise of these communities of practice] , and that i need, in order to help these communities come forth, to operate in a space of actual cultural relevance…

so because, even though i’m older… because i ‘belong’ much more to the contemporary developments (though i was already ‘there’ in a sense with a series of realizations beginning May 1987, and already had begun to define myself privately the way these communities now do, using much the same concepts and language…) , i have the curious dilemma of trying to connect music to something which has no place for music and is indifferent to music as such (insofar as music now has a secondary role, in helping make up the ‘content’ or ‘infrastructure’ of social media).

so yeah basically my project does not make sense, it was never meant to make sense, because i’m still trying to do music in and for itself (basically a 1970’s mindset), which is something that has no real cultural meaning now, and i’m not really “doing social media” whatever that may be which is what i should be doing.

And so i just feel really silly at this point that i didn’t realize this sooner, that i am in my own way stuck in the 1970’s in the way i still care about music as music, and i had a lot of false hope in bridging a gap that was insurmountable from the get-go.

10 Likes
#145

I had this realization as well not too long ago. I think your posts here on lines contributed.

It’s… Disappointing. But it’s also understandable. The fish that need frying keep getting bigger. Music is apparently the wrong type of spatula. Please excuse the strained metaphor as I am typing this as I rush between capitalist tasks. Ugh.

3 Likes
#148

Social Media has certainly come to replace many aspects of a younger person’s life that have been previously filled with a number of richer experiences: music, actual social interaction, playing outside. But, let’s also keep in mind that the Telecom Act of the mid 90’s ruined radio; ruined the ability for radio to introduce new genres to a collective society.

Much of the fondness for the 60’s and 70’s experienced today is because music was changing, and being experienced in realtime on free FM broadcasts.

The Telecom Act gave companies the legal freedom to purchase and control up to eight stations in any given market. The last real musical movement to hit the mainstream was Grunge in the early 90’s, and we’ve been stuck in a rut of generic Pop “sameness” since.

When is the last time you’ve heard a radio station introduce a new local artist? When was the last time a radio DJ had the freedom to determine the playlist? It was all before this Telecom Act. It was great for the small handful of monopolizing companies that then purchased the glut of the stations (Clear Channel, I-Heart, etc.) but terrible for the development and exposure of new musical ideas.

This brings us full circle to Social Media, which has become the means of exposure to new music, for those who actively seek it out. Social Media does tend to be dominated by “influencers” though, who do little to expand the exposure of the majority of social media consumers.

Music for the sake of music is all that many of us have to hold on to. That 70’s mindset is the only thing that will carry the spark of genuine creativity and imaginative expression through these dark, social media dominated times.

1 Like
#149

Or…

Social media is a more effective tool for the type of activism necessary for the time (than 70s album rock, whose effectiveness as a message carrier is debatable), and the issues simply don’t carry a tune the way they used to. Because they are complex and quite serious and don’t fit well into a verse chorus verse song structure.

It’s a hypothesis. Has some resonance for me.

5 Likes
#150

Having recently turned 60, I’m one of the ones who actually was there in the 70s…

I recognize that I’m probably a bit stuck in the old school music for the sake of music paradigm, but I also view the fact that music has been eclipsed by social media and the demise of aspects of the old music marketplace as positive developments, in that as the money falls away, the field becomes once again a place for amateurs pursuing their personal vision and inspiration for their own purposes…

The more obscure music becomes, the more occult potential it carries…

Just my perspective of course…

11 Likes
#151

i really don’t have the spoons to respond with the depth this post deserves, at the moment, but i fear that waiting for the intellectual resources to be available will turn into completely spacing this, despite bookmarking it, and i keep coming back to this.

thumbnail version is: i hear the…frustration? and sense of futility. as someone in their forties who hasn’t “accomplished” a lot of what they’d intended, i grapple with questions of timing and relevance with some frequency.

but i remain unconvinced that the gaps (because i’m reading at least two gaps, in your post) are—hmm, i don’t want to stick with your bridge metaphor, because my sense is that might be part of the problem—unable to be mediated.

my inclination is that there’s a tertiary solve, but one that would not yield a linear bridge. not a synthesis or continuation, but an introduction of a third point to triangulate.

my attention is continuously drawn to your comments here & elsewhere re: sound as medium. as…fluid. khaotic (not chaotic, in the sense of CM). and i’m…curious about riffs that could yield an emergent figure.

apologies re: the unformed-ness, TK here or elsewhere…

5 Likes
#153

i did my best version of rain dance patch (we just planted some seeds needing water) with the modcan.

still need more rain lol

2 Likes
#154

The human brain has bigger facilities to understand music, instrumental, than words/spoken language.

Of course you could say that the combination of the two would be the most potent art form, communicator. But in any case, the fact that ‘revolutionary’ lyrical content has become lesser, should not imply that music as such has lost it’s revolutionary content.

Grunge was mentioned, but Nirvana arguably was about the vacuouty of language itself. Yes there were implied messages in singing about teen spirit deodorant, at the same time though it was the amazing vocal performance and thunderous sounds that really brought the message. He wrote intentionally goofy and random lyrics.

The same goes for mumble rap today, it’s hardly about the lyrics, as long as it rhymes. The voice character, attitude and feeling is more important.

So I would not say postmodern attitudes to language in modern music, are the same as disappearing lyrical content.

I agree with Blomquist’s post.

@ht73

It’s an apt observation for sure. But occult music is increasingly less mainstream, the more occult it gets. In 95% of the cases.

Then the more time falls away, the more mainstream it gets again. Give it a hundred years or more.

4 Likes
#155

i mean. super valid point. it’s not really occult if it’s not largely hidden.

and honestly, in the 80s/90s, the weird stuff was still underground AF. and most folks didn’t dig the way i & my friends did.

#156

all i meant by “bridge” is just some peace or common understanding between the communities… at the very least so things aren’t taken as they’re not …

and i see the ‘third point’ (which I agree is the only real possibility) as the work itself.

work in all senses: the practice, the art, for they are really the same.

only in the work is there the hope something can appear in the way that it really is, but this is where i’m struggling, i seem to have gone down the wrong path once again, and must start again from zero, although i perhaps got closer than i ever did previously…

still there are questions as to where/how such work is disseminated and discussed, also where one may legitimately discuss creative struggles in a more concrete manner. this is what i think of when i think of the absence of a bridge.

@Samekid re: language: exactly – there have emerged in the past 25 years whole new forms of storytelling – even mythology in many essential respects – which have very little to do with ‘words’, and for good reason, because the fundamental distinction on which the logos is predicated, and in particular the blind spot created by that distinction, is at least implicitly challenged if not partially overcome (and it is likewise only in a true overcoming, which never quite fully arrives, that I can really exist…) it is likewise at these much more subterranean levels of sense/meaning/being that anything ‘occult’ truly operates. there’s no need to make a conscious attempt to hide, for I already hide just fine in plain sight. the default binary oppositions through which everything is normally seen guarantee this, in the liminal ‘third terms’ they occlude.

[likewise: apologies for lack of clarity… just very tired/burned out… will probably also take a break for some time. thanks much for the responses.]

3 Likes
#157

Yes it’s mainly keeping the nerve. Trust what you can rely on and not fleeting outside superficialities.

If we want to involve good old Ctulhu in it, a silent dispassionate force wanting to assimilate any type of live wire into the void.

So be yourself and show yourself. Make a connection with anyone you meet. But don’t get disappointed if there remain the deepest parts of you, that don’t seem to connect with the others. Go inside to find the realness.

But of course it is nice to talk to people who are educated.

Yes, rest first! It sharpens the senses.

4 Likes
#158

sound advice, as ever!

@ht73 do rest, reorient, and return refreshed!

1 Like
#160

these folks have some heavily magical stuff going on in their work, tho i can’t & won’t speak to their process. i’m sharing this in the hopes that gavin (i know you’re lurking!) will make an account & contribute to this conversation.

that said, i saw them play here on 10/16, and the…effects of that show were very much in alignment with workings that i’ve been engaged with (& were also relevant to my co-operator, who also attended).

for me: literally a temporary healing & an angelic visitation. ripples still spreading, we’ll see how it all feeds back.

2 Likes
#161

Hello all,

This thread is fascinating to me as a British Traditional Witch who has had an interest in paganism and the occult from a young age. (BTW is different from Wicca, drawn from folklore and historical records but many of the modern paths were devised just prior to or during the advent of Wicca).
I often feared that electronic music and witchcraft were somewhat incompatible, but this thread is really making me think about ways to further incorporate my Craft into my artistic output!

(Also, science is great! It does not have to stand in opposition to our spiritual understanding. Plenty of our most incredible scientists were/are believers. There’s some really interesting quantum theories of consciousness regarding the soul but I digress. :slight_smile: )

9 Likes