Month: August 2020

The newest episode of Sound Philosophy has appeared; it is entitled “Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and Repetition in Music.” This is the third episode in our series on Nietzsche. It examines the controversial and oft-misunderstood doctrine of the eternal recurrence for what it might tell us about the structuring of time (here I draw on Deleuze) and about how repetition in music operates in popular music. I review some of Adorno’s complaints about popular music and the distinction between progressive time and repetitive time. I then turn to a discussion of how the notions of the Apollinian and Dionysian are transformed in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, focusing on the idea that we ought to “become what we are.” This leads to the examination of the eternal recurrence and a manner of reading the repetition in popular music as a liberating and redeeming quality, not, as Adorno would have it, a symbol of our unfreedom. 

I haven’t been adding posts about my film writing to this website thus far–mostly because I don’t think anyone is really using this website much. That’s okay. I should still go ahead and post some links here just in case someone wants access to some of what I throw into the cultural abyss. To see everything I’ve published on the cultural webzine PopMatters, click HERE. There’s a lot there. For some recent things, click on the following links:

• On Infinity in Miranda July’s Me, You, and Everyone We Know: This is a great film. My take on it has to do with ideas about good and bad infinities, for example in the writing of Hegel, and uses the images of the line and the circle as they figure into the film.
• What Does Perception See? On Fighting as Perception in Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu Films: I take seriously Lee’s famous statement recommending that we “Be Water.” I apply some of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about perception to an understanding of the cliches of the Kung Fu fight scene and their expansion in Bruce Lee films.
• Breaching Closure in Pasolini’s Teorema: This is a troubling and fascinating film. I look at the issue of systems of thought and feeling that require the sense of closure while relying upon something that lies outside of the circumference of that closure (like Christianity, capitalism, touch, sense).
• The Narrative Voice in Scorsese’s Shorts: Scorsese has a fascinating way of dealing with narration (literal and implied).
• Performing Race in James Whale’s Showboat: A look at how Black and White are performed within this film. Showboat takes a fascinating and not always enlighten approach to the issue of race but we too often ignore its subtleties.
• The Erotic Disruption of the Self in The Comfort of Strangers: Strangers are strange….and yet strangely comforting. They reveal the strangeness in ourselves.
• Buridan’s Ass and the Problem of Free Will in The Great Escape: My original title for this was “Determined to Be Free,” which I still think is superior. Still this title tells you exactly what you are getting: a philosophical examination of free will through one of the great escape films.
• “Just Don’t Believe in Truth:” Cassavetes’s Husbands: Why do we assume extreme emotions (like anger, hostility, fear, revulsion) are more authentic than others? What kind of bullying behavior are we possibly engaged in when we insist that someone just “be themselves”?
• Choosing Experience in Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry: A film about suicide. This is one of those topics in which we often feel the need to offer an airtight reason for not committing suicide. That sometimes leads to bad thinking (as I try to suggest with respect to Camus and Schopenhauer). This film gives us a chance to think again about an issue we fear contemplating.

With “Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, Sections 1-2,” we continue our multi-episode exploration of the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche and its application to music. In this episode, we broach the generative antagonism Nietzsche believes is embodied in the interactions between what he terms the Apollinian and the Dionysian. These are not concepts; they are drives or instincts. They are as caught up in nature and the body as they are in philosophy and the mind. Indeed, for Nietzsche there is no easy distinction between mind and body. The Apollinian deals with beauty, clarity, individuation, bounded knowledge, and representation. The Dionysian addresses the sublime, ambiguity, self-forgetting, boundless feeling, and the Schopenhauerian Will. I conclude the episode by examining meter/rhythm and pitch/tone as manifestations of the relationship between the Apollinian and the Dionysian. 

Here is the Table I refer to in the episode.

“Level” of Comparison	Apollo	Dionysus
Artistic Production	Plastic Arts (Sculpture)	Music (nonimagistic)
Corporeal	Dreams	Intoxication
Metaphysical/ Philosophical (role of philosopher)	Phenomena (Kant/Schopenhauer)	Noumena (Kant/Schopenhauer)
Characteristics associated with knowledge	Calm, Sun-like (Light), Bounded	Stormy, Watery (Dark), Unbound
The Self	Principium individuationis (Individual)	Self-Forgetting (Immersion in the group and nature)
Aesthetics	Beautiful	Sublime
Clarity	The veil (of maya)	Rending of the veil
Ontology	Being (Distance from work)	Becoming (Becoming the Work of Art)
Life/Death	Freudian Eros	Freudian Thanatos

The newest episode (005–Sousa, Nationalism, and Masculinity) is now available. This episode explores the rise to prominence of brass bands or marching bands after the U.S. Civil War. We discuss the shift in ideals of patriotism that follows the war,  the emergence of the brass bands as an emblem of middlebrow nationalism, and the rejection of highbrow music at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. We then discuss John Phillip Sousa’s contributions to the arguments surrounding copyright and his qualms about recorded music. We then examine Sousa’s approach to march composition and the way in which it combines images of “barbaric splendor” and elements of the parlor song to give rise to a new vision of masculinity and its role in nationalism. 

Check out the latest episode of my podcast, Sound Philosophy. This episode is entitled “The 19th-Century Parlor Ballad.” It examines the 19th-century parlor ballad as a genre that helped to define shifting notions of the family and womanhood in the United States. I start by reviewing the prerequisites for a robust music industry (necessary to support a prolific production of song) and then discuss changes the family underwent in the early 19th century with the shift from an agrarian lifestyle to a more modern, urbane mode of living. I then discuss the role of nostalgia and the idealization of women in the parlor ballad. Examples are drawn from Thomas Moore, Stephen Foster, and George Frederick Root. 

The performances are by me and Kelly Inskeep. Enjoy!