what excuses does human have? that we have murdered God, and created music?
what excuses does human have?
that we have murdered God, and created music?
what ill delusion is this? that we are capable of either?
both are far, far too idealist.
i have never seen a man without broken his mind in songs,
nor have I seen one fulfilled his purpose in kneeling alone,
with eyes fully closed to everything.
what excuses have we for ourselves? the murder of all that are holy?
the creator of all unbearable silence---that we use to sanctify our murder
of the sacred into meaningful crusades?
I have never heard proper music that truly moved me, without moving
away from all things that are true, beautiful and exalted.
I have found never any joy in the defilement of human's internal chaos; nor do I find discord tasteful, as when one composes any sound it degrades them into a supposition.
I find western music harmonies I know to be solid and hard marble palaces, squares and minarets attempting to float upon liquid. the buoyancy and the superimposed gravity through pathos just doesn't add up. it just sinks in disgrace in my ear. I am not a westerner, those dead forms of architectural mindscape do not hold volume, and my ocean is sometimes devoid of minerals due to my tears, so classic western music just wouldn't float. it is a booming background thing to me.
I cannot though, refuse any sound made by Mongolian khoomei singers and their traditional stringed instruments. I cannot refuse Altai throat singing, which I understood not a word but there is vivacious and enlivening energy in that quaint form of melodical story-telling; I am afraid modern American cinema and your run of mill social awareness documentaries just cannot measure up to it. I do like Werner Herzog and Kurosawa though.
there is an imagined landscape of very old Japanese and Chinese poetry that floats in my heart… it is a mystic island made of vapours. they had become impotent and intangible, out of grasp and mind of the youth---but there is a kind of beauty in it---of dying things.
it is like the story-image and poem-image of Poe. there must be misery and suffering in itself. and against those conditions one must, as Poe says ratiocinate oneself out of that cerecloth and mite-mist veiled confusion of body and soul. I see in his work very elegant and meticulous effort at liberation of pain through affirmation of philosophical attitudes---affirmation of humane attitudes towards death, violence, decay and pitiable self-ruin.
but my heart turns eastwards still.
I have an unusual obsession with anime songs and touhou music, doujin or official arrangements. it was almost the only things I listened to for a decade, along with Chopin, Beethoven, Dowland, Bang Dream, galgame music.
it is something I feel filled with modern vigour----and this is a kind of youthful vigour that is dissipating into adulthood and middle age, which makes it increasingly boring. I cannot explain it properly. It is as if Japanese popular music, anime songs and galgame music have their own childhood and growing up period, which I find hard to appreciate----it could also be just my own age changes my perception, but I can find less and less anime songs with abilities to stir the heart like songs from 00s or 90s, perhaps i am guilty of donning a rosy lense.
Chopin, Beethoven, Dowland, later I also came to know Bartok, and Mongolian songs. I enjoy their clear and translucent way to displaying emotions in notes through different instrumentations. there is some kind of eastern aesthetics from my perspective to all of them. there is the verve and energy of horse-riding, of feasting with wine and meat, of deep contemplation in self-willed refusal of food, of sorrows when beloved things depart. I find them simple and easy to feel---I do not want my feeling to be artificial. it must make music sense even its a deal of smashing with blunt bludgeon against a wall. I do not need to understand the working of melodies to understand it is good.
I unfortunately find the kind of Chinese zither I heard in my music class, Mozart's Nocturnals, and some of his symphonies when I feel grave that day, or jazz and American cinematic music an utter bore. there is probably a mode of humour, a received kind of pathos, a sentiment to be shared in that kind of rhythm---which I lack completely. I cannot think of music being good or not, if i do not sense my body embrace dying and my soul struggling to die in vain. I cannot understand music when it is not carved with Dionysian conflicts and dramas. I cannot understand poetry when one is not facing irony and struggling for breath. Music must feel to me like a foreign and malicious tiger baring its fangs---I cannot feel music if there is no object to inspire awe and drive the blood in my vessels rushing to defend myself. music must be a cutting and bleeding thing to me; I am healed when I am killed again and again.
This is also the reason I hate allegory and uplifting kind of harmonies. When I know and expect music to be harmful like poison, and they advertise it to be balm, I would be disappointed in this dishonesty. Man---I'd like to know your illness and hatred---that kind of thing I would like to understand, analyse, define and try to find cures.
When you start lying for the ascendency of pain and suffering it makes medicine void. You cannot do science of melodical curing if your subject fibs and says they are already cured before you have even asked.
thus this is how God is murdered to me.
true music must be a descent in stead of an ascent----like the descent of Orpheus and Übermensch.
it must be like a playground slide----to the unwitting participants it feels like a fun ride, to those who observe---meaning those who are no longer little boys and girls playing in the field themselves---that distance children dropped from the top of the slide marks the progress of mankind's downfall.