From: Sean Parker (seanp@uu.net)
Date: Mon Feb 01 1999 - 20:49:00 MST
Here are some collected thoughts of mine on the topics listed above... I'm
looking for some discourse to focus my ideas... Seems like some of these
issues would be of interest to Extropian types...
Dance culture is a culture of escapism, a culture of acquiescence, a drug
culture, and foremost -- despite vocal objections to the contrary -- a
culture centered on the individual. What might have been it’s only redeeming
characteristic, the supposed love, togetherness, and unity of all ravers, as
well as the open, unrestrained affection and freedom of expression (all
captured in the much invoked but largely betrayed "PLUR") is easily reduced
to the fraudulent, the artificial, and the chemically dependent; without "E"
these benefits would surely evaporate. MDMA deserves some credit for its
short-lived but singular ability to produce "empathogenesis" or that
"loved-up" feeling of compassion or connectedness which is its hallmark. If
not for the inevitable recreational abuse of MDMA, and all the problems
associated with escapism in general, it might prove a useful substance under
a controlled environment. Needless to say, the necessary control is not and
won’t be present at a rave in the foreseeable future.
Even the music of dance culture -- oft cited by enthusiasts as the scene’s
lifeblood -- is just intended to perpetuate these escapist themes, themes
which are of course the real fuel behind the fire, more so than music or
drugs. As modern dance music has become increasingly good at catering to
dancers, it has simultaneously evolved an uncanny ability to distract and
disassociate the mind. My contention is that dance music, for reasons I
will elaborate below, has become a genre particularly well suited to
abstracting and refocusing the mind, and thus highly conducive to escapism.
My belief is that music which emphasizes the change in pitch over time (such
as chamber music in the Western tradition, to cite an extreme example) tends
to focus the individual on learned patterns of change, both in pitch from
moment to moment, and in the overall direction of the song, shifts which are
easily anticipated as we come to learn the natural harmonic progressions of
a particular genre. Learned patterns of melody and accompaniment make the
process of anticipation feel intuitive and the process of hearing and
tracking the predictable change in tone and structure focuses the individual
on the song. The focus achieved by tracking this combination of
predictability and surprise makes listening to popular music satisfying and
entertaining. Generally percussion is merely the glue by which a song is
held together and is used to set the mood/pace of a song. Descended from a
combination of African music, which emphasized beats, and the Western
tradition of religious music, which was highly dependent on tonality,
popular genres such as rock, alternative, and country have struck a
successful balance between the percussive beat oriented, and tonal melody
oriented modalities which had existed independently for so long.
Now for a little whack-ass music theory, inspired by maddeningly complex
drum n bass, a little house and a lot of funky breaks. Listening to
underground dance music, I became aware of my mind’s inability to wrap the
long tentacles of cognition around each distinct element, to fully encompass
the sum and entirety of a song, always finding myself limited to the
momentary perception of individual components. Take for existence a
particular drum-loop. Let your mind latch on to it for a moment and it
repeats; you can focus for just long enough to pick out its recurrence. But
it is sporadic and unpredictable, and quite often your mind loses it in some
other component, a bass-line or competing drum loop. Most frustrating, the
patterns of beats and samples, taken individually, are just that, patterns;
clearly, recognizable as structured, layered, and arranged via some stroke
of human intelligence. But that predictability is limited to the
individual samples, to perceive the song as a whole requires a kind of
detachment, a removal from the deep analytic perceptibility of sound
patterns. So it follows that electronic music has the peculiar capacity to
dissolve the immediate locus of thought and erect in its place a kind of
detached imperception that is neither analytic nor emotional -- it simply
is. Historically, this characteristic of beat oriented music was exploited
by aboriginal cultures seeking communion with the spirit world via
provocation of altered states of consciousness, generally through highly
repetitive layered beats and frenzied dancing; a phenomenon commonly
referred to as trance induction.
Drawing parallels between raves and aboriginal spirituality is nothing new,
Terrence McKenna and others have been expounding the connection for years.
In fact, the concept has caught on in the rave scene at large to the point
where the connection seems downright commonsensical. In certain circles
this new “techno-spirituality” is seen as a way of justifying the culture,
in essence infusing something inherently meaningless with some kind of
profound (albeit warped) significance. And as we all know, aboriginal
rituals often combined their hallmark uninhibited, unstructured dancing with
the use of mind-altering substances, the mixture of which further
intensified the perceptual divergence sought by practitioners; this of
course paralleling the widespread use of drugs at rave parties.
What really scares me about this “connection,” ironically, is exactly what
inspires others. We’re talking about something with a longstanding record
for being used as a spiritual aid, a physical and psychological tool
tailored to subverting the conscious mind and refocusing it entirely on the
“spiritual,” - which like any religion, is a wholly irrational belief
system. Spirituality was the dominating characteristic - the focus - of
every primitive “aboriginal” culture I can call to mind. What does this
mean for dance culture? I have a feeling we’ve hit on something big,
something capable of squelching one’s inner voice, drowning it in a barrage
of aural horseshit and inducing cognitive dissonance pretty reliably - in
essence, the perfect form of escapism.
The only thing more dangerous than escapism to society, and accordingly to
the happiness of the individual, is acquiescence. This is the essence of
passivity, of servility. It is the lowest form of defeat, one that
facilitates the passing from conscious opposition to unconscious
indifference, which knowingly folds, or relinquishes, in the face of
confrontation, and which is removed from the day to day, minute to minute
evaluative process by which we derive reality from sensation; a process that
is both healthy and productive.
o------------------------------------------------------------
- Sean Parker sean@broadsite.com
- Principal (703) 626-5959
- Broadsite, Inc.
-
- "There are no hierarchies, only
- many eyes to be looked out of." -Ginsburg
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