Aleatoric Music | MUS 101 – Elliott Jones

I know, it's like asking the secret to success, it's complex. Here is the thing, 4 or 5 years ago, i had a duo with a friend of mine, based on soundcloud, we were mostly making tropical house, it was so easy... we just had to send our music to a few soundcloud channels to get 10 000 views within the first 2 weeks, things were almost perfect, problem was, i didn't loved tropical house that much, i am more into Justice, Daft Punk & French touch movement etc.. So i left the duo, and haven't posted music for a long time, but kept producing, and 2 years ago (more or less) i started a solo project, better than ever (but still a long way to go) but i realised that things really changed, not in a good way.. it is now so hard to get heard.. And there aren't a lot of people reposting/sharing/simply liking my music like it used to be, i don't consider myself as being a pro, but i know my music isn't garbage... i don't make music for money, but it hurts to make music for aleatory people who forgets me 2 minutes after when i used to make 200 000 views per tracks.. Now, having 50 plays is so difficult, and it's getting worse! i produce Future Funk/French Touch/Nu disco type of music (lets say electronic), and no matter how hard i try to get heard, nothing works, instagram promo, soundcloud promo, all kind of promo i know, nothing happens. I will never stop producing music, if it has to take 15 years for me to make it, then lets go, but the problem here is that i have the feeling that i am going backwards, that less and less people are listening, i feel like i'm a black cat. I see People on soundcloud, with good music but not professional level, just like me, but growing a fanbase at the speed of sound, getting more and more comments on their tracks,the only people commenting on my songs are bots, and i, inevitably, am making less and less views and oh god i feel like sh**. Like i said, I don't make music for money, but my music isn't that bad and i don't understand what this thing i put all my heart in, i spend all my free time in, isn't reaching anyone new no matter how hard i try. would someone have a kind of a solution? Wish you guys the best anyway! (I am Really sorry for the long message, but i don't have a lot of people to talk about this kind of things to and to talk to anyway. Hope i didn't bothered..)(for those who wants to hear it just ask me.)

EDIT: I guess this might be the most controversial post on Reddit in 2020 and for the years to come.
I've discovered this guy yesterday, I've heard some of his Klavierstücke, the helicopter quartet, Telemusik etc... My question is really simple: how can you call that stuff "art"?
I see people saying that he's a genius, beautiful composition, avant-garde and all that stuff. Really? Are you kidding me? The aleatory thing might be "interesting", but I would call it an experiment, something made just for fun, but NEVER music. It looks like a big internet troll where everyone is just trolling each other or where some people want to look smart or something by saying that they can appreciate this kind of music. Get outta here, come on.
His compositions are like making a dish with 100 ingredients all mixed up, where they just don't fit with each other and maybe sometimes there's one that is good with another one, but just because of chance. It's like writing a poem with all the letters from the alphabet, without even making a word. It's like dressing with every existing color.
I mean, if he felt like that those notes were the right ones to express something he was feeling, ok good for him, but it just didn't work. If you like his music, good for you, but rock, pop, classical music, jazz, blues, electronic, country etc... still exist, but I don't see his experimentations still alive. Same thing goes for Arnold Schönberg btw.
It's like esperanto, it just failed. You can't create a language that is the result of an evolution in history and culture out of thin air. Same thing goes for music. He just threw away all the stuff that we learned, all the concepts of nature that determine what the human hear finds pleasant and he replaced it with math and randomness.
And let's be clear here, I'm not saying that experimentation is bad. Of course not. Try new stuff, break the rules, make some dissonances, have fun and find a new amazing sound. Do it, really. I think that this is necessary if we want to express ourselves at our fullest and if we want to create something new, but Karlheinz Stockhausen just failed.
And let's be honest, if tomorrow I make music like he did, everyone would just laugh at me. Is it because people are ignorant and can't appreciate this kind of "art"? No, it's because this is a huge joke where no-one is laughing.
I bet that even Karlheinz Stockhausen didn't like his own compositions. It looks like he did what he did to make people talk about him and just to be noticed. I guess he was the "kool kid" back there. Well, Karlheinz, if this was your purpose, you did it. Nice.
I don't know guys, it just hurts me and makes me laugh when I see people applauding after an orchestra performs one of his compositions.I think they just applaud so they don't think about the 80€ they spent for the performance.
Ok, now let's be serious for a minute. Am I missing something about his great work? Do I need to become God to understand this kind of expression? For real, tell me your opinions about this topic, I really want to understand.
Thanks.
​
EDIT: Ok, a lot of people think that I'm the type of guy that only likes music made in the "traditional" way and that music made in new ways shouldn't be considered music. This is not what I think. I respect taste in everything, even in music.
I also respect all types of music, even Stockhausen. Yeah, I don't like that type music, but I respect it.
I think that the point that I'm trying to make is the following:
Stockhausen did nothing wrong. He just composed music. You like it? Great. You don't like it? Great. I don't care.BUT!
Technically he composed music and technically if I play the C Major chord for 2 seconds I made music.BUT!
Can we all agree that if I bring a dish with poop to Masterchef the chefs are gonna tell me that it just sucks and they don't want to eat my poop? Yeah, technically they just don't like it and have a different taste. I might love eating my poop, it's a taste, and I respect it!
But reality is different. Technically they can't say that poop sucks because they should say that they don't like it. But is it really like this? Let's be honest guys.
I think that Stockhausen did nothing wrong. I think he made some bad music and by saying this I'm saying a wrong thing. I should just say that I don't like or even understand Stockhausen.
I'm trying to say that something is bad because 99% of people don't like it. Technically 99% of people have a different taste so I shouldn't say that something is bad because most of the people say it's bad, but reality is different.
So, technically this post shouldn't exist because I just don't like Stockhausen and tastes are tastes. I just don't like it and I shouldn't say that he's a bad composer.
Idk... I hope I explained myself.
TL;DR Reality is different.
EDIT 2: Woooooow, the downvotes tho. Imagine if I started insulting everyone's family, I would have -99999999 karma.

Hi. I am new on reedit and I come direct to the premonition topic to find people with similar experiences just like those I had along my life.
First, i need to say that I am a rational person, not spiritualized, not believe and God, aliens, and that kind of stuff (but nowadays I am starting do doubt of myself).
Considering all the experiences I had, I am trying to figure out what the hell it is going on.
My intention is to bring a serious report that might be happening with other people too.
This is not a horror story for entertainment. It is serious stuff. One of the experiences I had was bad. Two were good experiences of premonition and one was a neutral visual experience (not good neither bad).
I apologize in advance for any errors with my english.
At the end I will try to rise all probabilities that I believe are reasonable and I hope you can help me with more data from your own experiences.
So, let´s begin.

1. When I was 6 year old my father went to travel and I went to sleep with my mom. I remember it was winter solstice because my mom told me that that night would be the longest night in the year. My mom used very heavy blanket since in Brasil heating systems was not popular at that time. Time passed and I couldn't sleep. But at some point I was laying on side and I remember to feel a uncomfortable poking under my body. It was like a finger slowly poking my ribs. Not scratching, not aggressive, just a finger slowly rising from the bad and poking in different parts of my side ribs (I didn't know if it was a finger, I just felt like one). I didn't move because I was petrified of fear. I didn't woke up my mother since I thought she would not believe and though that I was crazy or something like that (I was just a kid). My only wish was that night to finish as soon as possible. At some point the finger stopped, but I was in alert mode and couldn't sleep as well. At some point my vision started to became white turve as if I was getting blind. When all was white suddenly something pull one of my foot and I immediately grabbed the headboard of the bed and started to scream asking help to my mom. My mom was in a deep sleep and took some seconds to wake up. When she did she stood up, and before she turned on the light, I was feeling nothing more. I was crying in complete shock and my mom though it was a nightmare. She only told me to pray and ask protection of my guardian angel. And I did. And I slept well. Now I am 33 yo and I keep sleeping in shrunken mode just in case. So this was a bad experience that never left my mind because I felt like a hand grabbing my foot and pulling just like the stories people use to tell to kids. Some might say it could be a nightmare, but it was so vivid to me. And what happens next give me more proofs.
2. Time passed and I became a teenager. The financials of my family was not good and I started to work, but for some time I was struggling in shit jobs. I was really wanting to have some good luck and win the lottery so I could help my family have a better life. At that same time I started to have some lucid dreams at night. I decided to make some experiences and try to control the dream. It worked one or two times. Then, one night I dreamed with a suited man using a wolf mask. I had full notion I was dreaming but at the same time I felt very heavy and lazy. The man ask me to get close so he could whisper in my ear. I did it and he started to say numbers. I immediately understood that those were numbers could serve for the lottery. And I started to make correlations so I could remember the numbers next day. When the man was telling me the last two numbers I didn't hear well as if the sound was getting distance. I remember to ask him to repeat the numbers but I was so heavy and lazy that I fall asleep. Next day I woke up very convinced about that numbers. It was a uncommon sensation. It is the sensation of the victory before a play. I used the numbers that I remembered from the dream and two more aleatory numbers. Next day I discover that I won the minor prize! (Around R$ 280).
3. Time passed again and now I was at the high school. I think it worth it to give you some context. I drop everything in the countryside to study (even knowing I had no money enough to that). I went to live with my sister in a big city in the south of Brazil. I used to get a metro (train) to go to the university. My course offered extra classes on Saturdays and I did the possible to be there. One Saturday I get the train back to the capital. It was midday. I used to stay in the front wagons so I could leave before everybody and not get stuck in the crowd. I leaved the wagon, went through a tunnel above the earth, and when I was in the middle of the way the most incredible experience happened to me. In 2 or 3 second something took control of my body and a voice entered my mind saying. "You are going to be robbed". And my body was now normal again. Ok, let´s stop so I can tell you some details. I didn't identified the gender of the voice. It could be masculine or feminine. I just remember It was plain and calm. No one was near me since when I left the train I walked very fast to not get stuck in the crowd. It was not like a thinking. It was more vivid, like you hearing someone whispering in your ear. But it was definitely an internal voice, not external. My first though was: "OMG, what was that?!" because it was something unexpected. I knew it was not a common thinking. I just kept walking and when I leaved the tunnel 5 minutes later a man call me. When I look to him I immediately understood what would going to happen. I run, but got stuck between two very busy avenues and I was robbed in the day light. I will not tell you the details of the robbery because that was common and all that time my mind was impressed with that premonitory confirmation. All I will tell you is that I had nothing in value to be robbed and the man just let me go. Even my cellphone was a very despicable one. After that I called my sister and told everything to her. I remember to wait for the bus and think: "I don´t know what was that but now I know that there is something more that is beyond common knowledge".
4. Ok, some months later I moved to the university city and went to live in a students republic. One night I arrived from work and went to the backyard enjoy my new MP3 device. I was so happy. I lay down over a stone bank just looking to the stars while hearing music. It was a warm night. It was a very big yard. Some points was very well lit while others was dark. Suddenly my eyes were attracted by some movement in the shadows. Ok, I need to give you more details about that. There is a private space we call light square, where people from the light providers use to enter to measure how much the house owners spend moth to month. That space was limited with 2 meter walls and iron fence, almost like a giant cage. It was dark but I could see like a head going up and down the wall spying on me. At the beginning I got petrified try to understand what was that. It was like a had, mas the way it moved was uncommon. I got scared. I thought. "Is that a robber? I need to get in security". I immediately run to the kitchen door and it was locked inside. My gosh! I started to beat the door like I was punching someone while I call for my friends until some good heart opened to me (I was so scared that I don't remember who did it). I told everybody what happened and my friends went in group and with flashlights to verify (I stayed away). Nothing was there and the access door was locked (remember it was like a cage. No way to run).

More than 12 years passed and nothing more occurred, so end of story, at least for now.
So, time to think.
Please notice that those stories are very different experiences. The first one was contact, the second and third was premonitory and the forth I believe was a visual contact. The first experience could be nightmare or a very vivid dream. It seemed very real to me. I have trauma until today. The second experience about the lottery could be just coincidence, but when you look together with the third experience from the train, It seems something bigger. At the same time, if you look to the third experience alone, you should say that hear voices could be schyzophrenia symptoms. But it never happened again and Schyzophrenia has reoccurrences, right? And gain, when you look to the whole picture, it doesn't seem to be this. The forth experience could be everything from illusion to mistake. But when I look to all those experiences I really believe that it was pretty sure something more.
So we need to take care about what all this means. Your cultural background can influence your opinions about all this stuff. Someone might say it was aliens, other can say it is something related to religion. I try to stay very openminded and maybe we can find another clues with more people bringing other experiences.
Until now the spiritism books was what most filled in the gaps. I read The Mediuns Book and The Spirits Book, both from Alan Kardek who was a skeptical man just like me. But I hope you can bring some more clues to this search.
If you read until here, thank you very much. I hope you can add knowledge to this report. If you have suggestions about other groups that might be interest to this report, please feel free to suggest.

Thought it would be fun to post this review, written in 1967 by a critic who hated Sgt Pepper. John even referred to him once, for a laugh, in an interview.
The critic realized years later that the stereo he was listening to the album on had only one channel. That means he only heard the right speaker. And for Beatles songs in stereo, especially Sgt Pepper, that means you are missing half of the song. :)
Still didnt change his opinion when he gave it a fresh listen.
Also, he's a rocker, Long Tall Sally type fan who didnt like that the Beatles sound / style was changing.
​
A splendid time is guaranteed for all!
​
------
​
"We Still Need the Beatles, but …”
The Beatles spent an unprecedented four months and $100,000 on their new album, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” (Capitol SMAS 2653, mono and stereo). Like fathers-to-be, they kept a close watch on each stage of its gestation. For they are no longer merely superstars. Hailed as progenitors of a Pop avant garde, they have been idolized as the most creative members of their generation. The pressure to create an album that is complex, profound and innovative must have been staggering. So they retired to the electric sanctity of their recording studio, dispensing with their adoring audience, and the shrieking inspiration it can provide.
The finished product reached the record racks last week; the Beatles had supervised even the album cover — a mind-blowing collage of famous and obscure people, plants and artifacts. The 12 new compositions in the album are as elaborately conceived as the cover. The sound is a pastiche of dissonance and lushness. The mood is mellow, even nostalgic. But, like the cover, the over-all effect is busy, hip and cluttered.
Like an over-attended child “Sergeant Pepper” is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps, harmonica quartets, assorted animal noises and a 91-piece orchestra. On at least one cut, the Beatles are not heard at all instrumentally. Sometimes this elaborate musical propwork succeeds in projecting mood. The “Sergeant Pepper” theme is brassy and vaudevillian. “She’s Leaving Home,” a melodramatic domestic saga, flows on a cloud of heavenly strings. And, in what is becoming a Beatle tradition, George Harrison unveils his latest excursion into curry and karma, to the saucy accompaniment of three tambouras, a dilruba, a tabla, a sitar, a table harp, three cellos and eight violins.
Harrison’s song, “Within You and Without You,” is a good place to begin dissecting “Sergeant Pepper.” Though it is among the strongest cuts, its flaws are distressingly typical of the album as a whole. Compared with “Love You To” (Harrison’s contribution to “Revolver”), this melody shows an expanded consciousness of Indian ragas. Harrison’s voice, hovering midway between song and prayer chant, oozes over the melody like melted cheese. On sitar and tamboura, he achieves a remarkable Pop synthesis. Because his raga motifs are not mere embellishments but are imbedded into the very structure of the song, “Within You and Without You” appears seamless. It stretches, but fits.
What a pity, then, that Harrison’s lyrics are dismal and dull. “Love You To” exploded with a passionate sutra quality, but “Within You and Without You” resurrects the very cliches the Beatles helped bury: “With our love/We could save the world/If they only knew.” All the minor scales in the Orient wouldn’t make “Within You and Without You” profound.
​
The obsession with production, coupled with a surprising shoddiness in composition, permeates the entire album. There is nothing beautiful on “Sergeant Pepper.” Nothing is real and there is nothing to get hung about. The Lennon raunchiness has become mere caprice in “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” Paul McCartney’s soaring Pop magnificats have become merely politely profound. “She’s Leaving Home” preserves all the orchestrated grandeur of “Eleanor Rigby,” but its framework is emaciated. This tale of a provincial lass who walks out on a repressed home life, leaving parents sobbing in her wake, is simply no match for those stately, swirling strings. Where “Eleanor Rigby” compressed tragedy into poignant detail, “She’s Leaving Home” is uninspired narrative, and nothing more. By the third depressing hearing, it begins to sound like an immense put-on.
There certainly are elements of burlesque in a composition like “When I’m 64,” which poses the crucial question: “Will you still need me/Will you still feed me/when I’m 64?” But the dominant tone is not mockery; this is a fantasy retirement, overflowing with grandchildren, gardening and a modest cottage on the Isle of Wight. The Beatles sing, “We shall scrimp and save” with utter reverence. It is a strange fairy tale, oddly sad because it is so far from the composers’ reality. But even here, an honest vision is ruined by the background which seeks to enhance it.
“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is an engaging curio, but nothing more. It is drenched in reverb, echo and other studio distortions. Tone overtakes meaning and we are lost in electronic meandering. The best Beatle melodies are simple if original progressions braced with pungent lyrics. Even their most radical compositions retain a sense of unity.
But for the first time, the Beatles have given us an album of special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent. And for the first time, it is not exploration which we sense, but consolidation. There is a touch of the Jefferson Airplane, a dab of Beach Boys vibrations, and a generous pat of gymnastics from The Who.
The one evident touch of originality appears in the structure of the album itself. The Beatles have shortened the “banding” between cuts so that one song seems to run into the next. This produces the possibility of a Pop symphony or oratorio, with distinct but related movements. Unfortunately, there is no apparent thematic development in the placing of cuts, except for the effective juxtapositions of opposing musical styles. At best, the songs are only vaguely related.
With one important exception, “Sergeant Pepper” is precious but devoid of gems. “A Day in the Life” is such a radical departure from the spirit of the album that it almost deserves its peninsular position (following the reprise of the “Sergeant Pepper” theme, it comes almost as an afterthought). It has nothing to do with posturing or put-on. It is a deadly earnest excursion in emotive music with a chilling lyric. Its orchestration is dissonant but sparse, and its mood is not whimsical nostalgia but irony.
With it, the Beatles have produced a glimpse of modern city life that is terrifying. It stands as one of the most important Lennon-McCartney compositions, and it is a historic Pop event.
“A Day in the Life” starts in a description of suicide. With the same conciseness displayed in “Eleanor Rigby,” the protagonist begins: “I read the news today, oh boy.” This mild interjection is the first hint of his disillusionment; compared with what is to follow, it is supremely ironic. “I saw the photograph,” he continues, in the voice of a melancholy choir boy:

He blew his mind out in a car He didn’t notice that the lights had changed A crowd of people stood aud stared They’d seen his face before Nobody was reallysure if he was from the House of Lords.

“A Day in the Life” could never make the Top 40, although it may influence a great many songs which do. Its lyric is sure to bring a sudden surge of Pop tragedy. The aimless, T. S. Eliot-like crowd, forever confronting pain and turning away, may well become a common symbol. And its narrator, subdued by the totality of his despair, may reappear in countless compositions as the silent, withdrawn hero.
​
Musically, there are already indications that the intense atonality of “A Day in the Life” is a key to the sound of 1967. Electronic-rock, with its aim of staggering an audience, has arrived in half-a-dozen important new releases. None of these songs has the controlled intensity of “A Day in thg Life,” but the willingness of many restrained musicians to “let go” means that serious aleatory-pop may be on the way.
Ultimately, however, it is the uproar over the alleged influence of drugs on the Beatles which may prevent “A Day in the Life” from reaching the mass audience. The song’s refrain, “I’d like to turn you on,” has rankled disk jockeys supersensitive to “hidden subversion” in rock ’n’ roll. In fact, a case can be made within the very structure of “A Day in the Life” for the belief that the Beatles — like so many Pop composers — are aware of the highs and lows of consciousness.
The song is built on a series of tense, melancholic passages, followed by soaring releases. In the opening stanza, for instance, John’s voice comes near to cracking with despair. But after the invitation, “I’d like to turn you on,” the Beatles have inserted an extraordinary atonal thrust which is shocking, even painful, to the ears. But it brilliantly encases the song and, if the refrain preceding it suggests turning on, the crescendo parallels a druginduced “rush.”
The bridge begins in a staccato crossfire. We feel the narrator rising, dressing and commuting by rote. The music is nervous with the dissonance of cabaret jazz. A percussive drum melts into a panting railroad chug. Then

Found my way upstairs and had a smoke Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.

The words fade into a chant of free, spacious chords, like the initial marijuana “buzz.” But the tone becomes mysterious and then ominous. Deep strings take us on a Wagnerian descent and we are back to the original blues theme, and the original declaration, “I read the news today, oh boy.”
Actually, it is difficult to see why the BBC banned “A Day in the Life,” because its message is, quite clearly, the flight from banality. It describes a profound reality, but it certainly does not glorify it. And its conclusion, though magnificent, seems to represent a negation of self. The song ends on one low, resonant note that is sustained for 40 seconds. Having achieved the absolute peace of nullification, the narrator is beyond melancholy. But there is something brooding and irrevocable about his calm. It sounds like destruction.
What a shame that “A Day in the Life” is only a coda to an otherwise undistinguished collection of work. We need the Beatles, not as cloistered composers, but as companions. And they need us. In substituting the studio conservatory for an audience, they have ceased being folk artists, and the change is what makes their new album a monologue.

Distribution: The Outside, Not Nomos

Cows offer the clearest picture of crowned anarchy, also called “nomadic distribution” (DR, 41; TP, 158). When set out to pasture, they practice auto-nomy by following a self-regulated nomos, the customary distribution in open space (“in general an unlimited space; it can be a forest, meadows beside rivers, a mountain slope,” says philologist Emmanuel Laroche on page 116 of his etymological study) that “crowns” whatever is unique to each landscape, as in livestock feeding on a particular patch of grass and leaving excrement to fertilize the soil anew. Nomos is part of a larger constellation of nem- words examined by Laroche, including nomads and distribution (nomos), customary law (nomos), melody (nomos), pasture or sphere of command (nomos), roaming (nomas, the basis for nomad), pasture (nemo), inhabitant (naetees), territory (nemeesis), governor (nomarchees), and law (nomoi). Most controversial about Laroche’s argument is his claim that Greek is the only of the Indo-European languages to be pastoral, which casts the Solonic sense of nomos as statist distribution as a betrayal of its nomadic roots. Over the generations, nomos loses its nomadic heritage to become the administrative appropriation, distribution, and use of land (22–29, 115–24, 178–205). During this time, nomos is combined with the household (oikos) to name economics; first mentioned by Phocylides in a poem where he compares women to animals: to dogs, bees, free-range pigs, and long-maned horses (Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, 173–74). (Phocylides suggests that his friend marry the bee because she is a good housekeeper—oikonomos agathe; 174.) But Marx shows in chapter 7 of Capital that he knows that “what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.” Certainly there is a residual speciesism in Marx’s remark, as animals’ experience of the world (Umwelt) is sophisticated enough to produce many things (“art does not wait for human beings to begin”) (TP, 320). Yet there is a considerable difference in how humans and cows crown the space that they occupy. As such, we should be concerned more by how each constructs the world than by the excrement with which they consecrate it.
Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue demonstrates in his Social and Philosophical Studies how nomos was turned against the barbarians. Land first “distributed by lot, with the aid of pebbles,” is set under the watch of Nemesis, the goddess of just distribution (125; Laroche, Histoire, 89–106). Nomos continues to affirm its groundlessness when it is played like a game of chance at the table of the gods, with the dice affirming aleatory points that fracture the sky and fall back to a broken earth (DR, 284). Lafargue posits that the great betrayal appears when justice, born out of equality, sanctions the inequalities of land distributed by right and not luck (Social and Philosophical Studies, 133–34, 129–30). No longer the protector of nomads, Nemesis inflicts the death penalty “against those who menace property” for the purpose of “teaching the barbarians to trample under foot their noble sentiments of equality and brotherhood” (130–31). Lafargue thus demands a communist revolution that suppresses private property to banish “the most frightful nightmare which ever tortured sad civilized humanity,” the idea of nomic justice (134).
There are two outsides to the state: one a worldwide union, the other a fragmented resistance (TP, 381). To Deleuze and Guattari, this exteriority demonstrates the irreducibility of the nomos to the law. If there is anything to this notion, it is not found in a form of exteriority but in the fact of the outside—that there will always be nondenumerable groups (469–73), that there are flows that even the best axiomatic can never master (468–69), and that power now produces more than it can repress (F, 28–29). This is the true meaning of “deterritorialization” and “the infinite speed of thought”—each concept confirms the extraordinary powers of the outside (AO, 105; WP, 21, 35–38, 42). The difficulty is that “one cannot write sufficiently in the name of an outside” because it “has no image, no signification, no subjectivity” (TP, 23). How then to link with the outside? The simplest way is to fashion a war machine as a relation to the outside (TP, 376–77). Another path to “a new relation to the outside” may be found in a fissured planet that spews fires that consume the world (DI, 156, 158–59). Such deterritorializations unleash movements that “cease to be terrestrial” when “the religious Nome blooms and dissolves” and “the singing of the birds is replaced by combinations of water, wind, clouds, and fog” (TP, 327).
The outside appears like Frankenstein’s monster, with a crack of lightning late into the dreary night while the atomist’s rain patters away from the outside. Its darkness does not come from void worship or an existentialist reckoning with nothingness. Flashing brilliantly as a shock to thought, it appears as the “bearer of a problem” that paints the world black with dread (DR, 140). This movement grounds thought as “the relationship with the outside” (DI, 255). Exteriority here is not some transcendent light or yawning void. Rather, the outside opens out to a new milieu, like cracking the window in a house. The outside is seldom as pleasant as a breeze, however, as it invades in all its alien force. Thought here has a choice, to represent or intensify; the latter follows Paul Klee’s famous formula: “not to render the visible, but to render visible” (FB, 144). It amplifies the impinging power of the outside to cause a horrible discord that splits apart the harmonies of reason sung in the halls of state thought (DI, 259–60). Such philosophy does not sing, it screams in the analogical language of “expressive movements, paralinguistic signs, breaths” (FB, 93). The outside howls with an “open mouth as a shadowy abyss” (51).

Politics: Cataclysmic, Not Molecular

“The revolutionary was molecular, and so was the counter-revolution,” Tiqqun prophetically declares (Introduction to Civil War, 200). Yet the “molecular revolution” actually begins with Proust, who writes in Sodom and Gomorrah of three levels of sexuality: straights, gays, and queers. The first two types connect “molar” lines between fixed objects, each category simply being an inversion of the other (AO, 68–71). The third draws a “transversal” molecular line between the unspecified, partial, and flux of flows “unaware of persons, aggregates, and laws, and of images, structures, and symbols” (70–71, 311). For a long time, the love that dare not speak its name hid with other queer things made up of “very different mechanisms, thresholds, sites, and observers” (WP, 78). But counterculture exposed the secret, which is to say, disclosed a molecular line of previously clandestine passions while blossoming into the flower power of the Summer of Love publicly consecrated at Woodstock’s Three Days of Peace, Music, and Love. This new world bore what Paolo Virno calls in Grammar of the Multitude the liberatory “anti-socialist demands” of “radical criticism of labor,” “an accentuated taste for differences” and “the aptitude (at times violent, certainly) for defending oneself from the State, for dissolving the bondage to the State as such” (111). But the life of this molecular line was short. It was put back to work by disco, flexible production, and the Reagan revolution in an odd “communism of capital” (111).
The cataclysm is not an end but a new beginning, the cataclysm of a temporary hell, “itself the effect of an elementary injustice” that sweeps in and out, rather than being an abysmal lake of sulfur where souls burn forever (ECC, 46). It is the apocalypse before its decadent transformation into the system of Judgment (39). Only a revival of this cataclysmic event can end the apocalypse of an “already industrialized organization” that appeared “a Metropolis” by way of “the great military, police, and civil security of a new State” with a “programmed self-glorification” complemented by a “demented installation of an ultimate judiciary and moral power” (44, 46). We know from Nietzsche’s Gay Science that the impending cataclysm of “breakdown, destruction, ruin” may appear gloomy (279). And it will certainly cover the earth in a blackness darker than the world has ever seen (279). Yet we should greet it with cheer. For the cataclysm brings with it a new dawn worthy of our highest expectations. Though the daybreak may not be bright, we will have escaped the judgment of God, Man, and the World. “At long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger,” because “the sea, our sea, lie open again” . . . “perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’” (280).

Cinema: The Powers of the False, Not the Forces of Bodies

Bodies are a well-composed image of power. The body of God (the Sacrament of Jesus). The body of a saint (the pierced corpse of the martyr). The body of the sovereign (the King’s two bodies). The body of the tyrant (Big Brother’s face). The social body (the body politic). A body of evidence (the state’s case). The idea of society or the world functioning as an organism is well sedimented. In its stupidest form, it posits a resemblance between the human body and society. Just as various organisms interact to form an organism as a functional whole, it states, society is the cooperation of various social organs. The body provides an image for the much-talked-about “body without organs,” the great inspiration for Deleuze, who says that if we are to believe in the world, “give me a body then” (C2, 189).
The body is not really the enemy, the organism is. Some would have bodies appear through their opposites, locked in eternal combat—as the sinner and their Eternal Savior, the regicide and the King, the criminal and the Law (TP, 108). But as an organism, the body is put to use for extracting “useful labor,” either as a product of work (where organs are connected to the technical machines of the capitalism) or self-reproduction (where organs are connected to the social machines of the species) (AO, 54). The image of the body as an organism might appear as a step forward, as it invokes a form of ecological thinking of interconnected systems. But we are only interested in the body as a frustrating set of resistances, “obstinate and stubborn,” as it “forces us to think, and forces us to think what is concealed from thought, life” (C2, 189). This is why it is said that “we do not even know what a body can do.” But with the relative ease in which the body has been confused for an organism, perhaps it is time to abandon the image of the body completely. Stop thinking like lawyers, who try cases only after a body has been found. There is a simple reason: the point is not to construct a body without organs (organization, organism, . . .) but organs without a body. We only get outside the productivist logic of accumulation when “at last the disappearance of the visible body is achieved” (C2, 190).
Against the state’s body of evidence: “The ‘true world’ does not exist,” and even if it did, “it would be inaccessible, impossible to describe, and, if it could be described, would be useless, superfluous” (C2, 137). The conspiracy against this world begins with time, which “puts truth in crisis” (130). This is the fundamental problem of the “body of the law” described by Derrida whereby the law must continually rule against what it previously established as the truth (and thus its own authority) (“Force of Law”). It is these moments that reveal an in-effectivity of the truth—denouncing states, nations, or races as fictions does little to dislodge their power, however untrue the historical or scientific justifications for them might be (Seshadri, Desiring Whiteness). The state is nothing but these “not-necessarily true pasts,” the founding mythologies that fictionalize the origin of states and nations of people (C2, 131). This is the power generated only between the true and the false: what Deleuze calls “the real.” The importance of the real is central, as trying to use truth to dispute the false does not work: those who denounce the illegal violence used to found legal orders are quickly dismissed or jailed, and the many climate scientists who harangue the public about the truth of global warming fail to spur policy change.
Cinema “takes up the problem of truth and attempts to resolve it through purely cinematic means” (Lambert, Non-philosophy, 93). There are films that go beyond metaphor and analogy, operating instead through a realism of the false. This is not the epic cinema of Brecht or Lang, whose dissimulation and relativism ultimately return the morality of judgment through the viewer. It is a realism of what escapes the body, presenting something it cannot perceive on its own—not different worlds but realities that exist in the present (though not currently lived) that confirm reality by weakening it. Deleuze finds that the elusive truth of postwar cinema does not prevent the existence of a “truthful man” but the “forger” as the character of new cinema (C2, 132). The forger refuses the moral origins of truth and frustrates the return to judgment (C2, 138–39). The realism of the false shows us love through the eyes of a serial killer (Grandrieux’s Sombre), gives us the real thrill of self-destruction (Gavras’s Our Day Will Come), unleashes the cruelty of nature against the cool logic of liberal patriarchy (von Trier’s Anti-Christ), and solicits us in the horrifying conspiracies of a new flesh (Cronenberg’s Videodrome).

The Sensible: Indiscernibility, Not Experience

The senses think when the boundary between the imaginary and the real collapses. This is what happens whenever the suspension of disbelief continues outside the frame (C2, 169). But the suspension carries on only as long as it is not whittled down to a narrow proposition through “infinite specification” (DR, 306). It expands by establishing a “distinct yet indiscernible” proximity (TP, 279–80, 286). In this strange zone of indiscernibility, figuration recedes—it is right before our eyes, but we lose our ability to clarify the difference between a human body, a beast, and meat (FB, 22–27). There is no mystical outside, just the unrelenting intrusion of “the fact that we are not yet thinking” (C2, 167). This is because experience is itself not thought but merely the provocation to think—a reminder of the insufferable, the impossibility of continuing the same, and the necessity of change.“ Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting,” says Foucault (“Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 88). Neither is sense. The best sense is a sensation, a provocation, that introduces insufficiency (L, 50–58). So instead of adequate conceptions, we spread insufficient sensations. This insufficiency does not carry the weight of inevitability. It may begin with a petulant indecisiveness, such as Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to,” but it must not end there. The greatest danger is that indecision consumes us and we become satisfied for one reason or another, withering like Bartleby in jail cells of our own making. Our communism demands that we actively conspire under the cover of the secret; for there is nothing more active than the Death of the World. Our hatred propels us. Just as “an adventure that erupts in sedentary groups” through “the call of the outside,” our sense that the world is intolerable is what compels us to build our own barbarian siege engines to attack the new Metropolis that stands in Judgment like a Heaven on Earth (DI, 259).

I don’t if this is the right sub....
I was on Deezer and decided to listen some radios. I put on “Summer Radio”, that’s a France’s radio.
At the moment was playing an amazing music, wonderful one. I really want to know what’s the name of that music. It played after “Turn me on” by Kevin Lyttle and before “Budapest” by George Ezra.
I tried to enter in Summer Radio’s site but it’s all in French (I barely speak English) and when I saw the last 5 songs played.... the song that I wanted was “glitched”, the name was some aleatory thing.
I remember that the music says something like this: “ how many got TO CHANGE THE WORLD” .
I’m 100% sure that “To Change the world” was in the song. The voice is by some “kids”, I can’t explain how was. Oh, it was a electro-pop music.
I appreciate all help.
Thank You!!

Hello everyone, first time using reddit! :)
You can feel free to point any error in my speech, maybe im taking wrong information in consideration. Just be open minded to my idea! :D
I've been really interested in anthropology. One aspect of our history that blows my mind is the Cognitive Revolution. The Late Upper Paleolithic Model, or Upper Paleolithic Revolution, refers to the idea that, though anatomically modern humans first appear around 150,000 years ago, they were not cognitively or behaviorally "modern" until around 50,000 years ago. Thats the reason it was a "revolution": suddenly, ~50.000 years ago, there was a boom in inovation in tools, culture, language, art, hunting, etc and that also led to Homo Sapiens spread from Africa to the hole planet. As I've read on the book "Sapiens: a brief story of mankind", science knows very little about what led to the revolution, and one of the most accepted theorys is that it was due to a few, but crucial, gene mutations that shaped our brains to make Homo Sapiens behave as we do today (advanced language, music, dance, rituals, effective cooperation even in large groups, abstract thinking, etc). For me, it really feels weird to think that a few gene mutation is what was missing in Homo Sapiens brains (that was going through a long evolution process since the beggining of the Homo genre (completly animal-like conscious being) to us nowadays (animals with language and culture) ). to behave modernly.
Many people like to compare our brains to computers, and thats what im going to do. Every animal have its brain (computer). It's evident that humans are animals with a very unique brain. Lets say its a computer with many and many specific pieces and processors interconnected in a real complex way that make humans do all this increadible things other animals cant. Lets point cognitive revolution happened 50.000 years ago. Thats to say that, 51.000 years ago, sapiens computers was really really different than 50.000 years ago. Maybe it was lacking just one cable to connect important parts and make the computer work its new increadible features? And then the gene mutations happened, this cable was birth and humans started thinking and doing things such as shamanism and rituals? I cant buy this idea. Before cognitive revolution, our brain was much more like is today than it was like other animal's brain, but our behaviour not. A very little change in brain to a big different change in behaviour.
I think evolution took thousands of years to make a human with a brain capable of behave modernly, this brain was "ready" when Homo Sapiens arrived and evoluted a little bit (Homo Sapiens arived 200.000 years ago, but they were anatomically modern some thousands of years later - before the cognitive revolution) and then something else (maybe something at a conscious level not at a gene level) had to happen to trigger the change in consciousness of this animal.
For a long time, even before the arising of the Homo genre, earth was fulled with many psychoative plants. Psilocybe mushrooms (aka magic mushrooms) are found naturally all over the planet, and its a very unique drug: it arises from the floor ready to use- pick them, eat, and you'll have a super profund sensorial experience. No cooking, smoking or preparation needed. There are another psychedelic mushrooms found naturally, and also many plants and cacti with this properties. Nature has a hole catallogue of "nature occuring LSD's" growing worldwide. From now on i'll just talk about psilocybe mushrooms because of its unique properties i've listed. (they're everywhere and ready to use).
Im sure many animals have accidentaly ingested these mushroooms. Probably a hungry bear (just an example) once eated some of them, tripped balls for hours, got confused and if the trip didnt make him vulnerable to dangers and death, after some time it continued its bear life. I'm sure this happened many times with many animals.
Now i'm talking about a specific animal that accidentally induced a mushroom trip because was hungry: an Homo Sapiens. An animal with a very unique brain, that evolution took some million years to develop after our split from other primates. A brain really like ours nowadays. But at that time, this animal wasnt much different from other animals.
My point is that... Maybe, Homo Sapiens were the first animals in this planet to understand the Psychedelic experience. Isn't curious all theese natural occuring psychedelic plants? Isn't weird why does the psychedelic experience exists? Maybe we will never find an evolutive advantage for the production of psilocybin in these mushrooms, and maybe it is not just an compound that leads to a funny and aleatory reaction when ingested. Maybe these substances were there just waiting to trigger an evolution in consciousness in a animal of this planet. After cognitive revolution, human started, dancing, making music with instruments, rituals, and had the shaman (an expert in altered states of consciousness - including those induced by psychedelic plants) as the center figure).
Imagine some pre cognitive revolution Homo Sapiens hungry searching for food in the Savana. They find magic mushrooms, eat them and after some minutes they start tripping balls. Man, they're humans just like you and they've ate many magic mushrooms, you know what will happen - probably one of the most profund drug-induced experiences possible). Many shamanic culutres says that psychedelics leads to a contact with the divine - its instinctive for the human to feel what we call "divine" with these substances. One of the Sapiens hallucinates a increadible psychedelic face on a tree, and since this animal can make some different things (tools, fire and proto-language),it is capable of taking a sharp tool and dig the psychedelic face in the tree. The other sapiens, tripping balls, see's the psychedelic face drawn in the tree and recognize it as the same sort of thing as the hallucinations the mushrooms are inducing on them. Everybody's recognize the uniqueness of this art, and all of them starts "believing in that god". Now, on a conscious level, an evolution is triggered in these Sapiens. Later, they eat the mushrooms again, same thing happen and now they are going to praise to the gods that are appering in more complex ways. They start repeat drumming, they paint more psychedelic faces on the woods. Now, there's something different in the agenda of an earth animal: Psychedelic rituals. Finally, its understood why earth has mushrooms everywhere.
My english sucks and im not good on sharing my ideas. But I think this long text is enough for you all to understand my idea!
I know Terrence McKenna has the stoned ape theory, that shares the ideia that Psilocybe mushrooms had a great role in the human consciousness evolution. But this theory talks more about the use of mushrooms in early periods of human evolution, not specific during the cognitive revolution.
Mushrooms are also known to be one of the most profund psychedelic in terms of changes in identity and stuff during the trip. It's induced ego death is really powerfull and unique, maybe it has some relation in terms of changing an animal consciousness to a consciousness with a stronger identity (the raise of the ego) and capable of understanding music, art, geometry and stuff.
What do you think about all this stuff?
Thanks for the attention!!

I've been thinking about this question on and off for a few months now, ever since I went to see the Telescopes play a pub gig in London in June.
I went to the gig having recently discovered the band through their early 1990s output. Then, the band played a sort of mixture of shoegaze and spacey psychedelia that pushed all the right buttons for me: they seemed like the shoegaze band I had dreamed of discovering, playing utterly beautiful delicate wisps of songs that had some of the best vocal harmonies I had ever heard with a wonderfully catchy sense of melody and an occasional penchant for noisy freakouts. I loved what I heard and the moment I saw that they were playing a venue near where I lived (even if in a reunited form), I press-ganged a couple of friends who have similar tastes in music into coming to the gig with me. I even looked up live footage of the band and shit looked pretty good.
I hyped the band enormously to them, saying that they were one of the most beautiful bands I had ever heard (I still pretty much stand by this) and that they were in for an hour and a half of the most gorgeous shoegaze ever created, blah blah blah.
Instead, what we got was a noise show.
Not a noise-rock show, a noise show. The band consisted of four guitarists, who sat/kneeled onstage in a sea of pedals and tortured their instruments. One guy held a naked flame against his pickups for a few minutes. Another guy periodically screamed unintelligibly into a mic. At one point, one of the guys stood up for a bit. Everyone surged forward, assuming that perhaps the band was going to play an actual song and that everything up until now had been a warm-up. The guy swayed around a bit and then sat down again to carry on fiddling with his pedals.
About 50 minutes into the show, one of my friends tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that ~70% of the audience had either left or retreated to the back room to watch the football. Just before the show, the bar-room had been pretty much packed, and the excitement had been tangible, but even as my friend pointed out how the room had drained, we saw a couple of other people slope out, looking disappointed.

• Should they have been disappointed? Is this a valid reaction?
  
• The band played some "regular" shows last year. Was it a dick-move to do a noise show in front of a packed and stoked audience?
  
• Does it run against the point of art to "expect" or "demand" that artists do X or Y?
  

Of course, my example is just the tip of the iceberg - whenever an artist changes his/her sound, or does something out of the ordinary, or collaborates with a left-field choice, people inevitably get pissed off. Is there any validity to this?
Another good example is Bradford Cox's famous "My Sharona" debacle: was this a dick-move? Does Bradford deserve to be criticised and vilified for this (he was)? Is it reasonable to show up and simply expect him to run through Parallax?
I should probably mention that my friends and I actually really enjoyed the Telescopes gig: partly because the opening band was awesome, but also because there was a point after which the noise stopped being off-putting and started being entrancing - we just stood there, swaying slightly, letting it wash over and through us, and it was kind of amazing. One of my friends is a huge experimental music nut and started going on about Xenakis and aleatory music and how interesting the techniques at work were.
Also, please share any similar experiences you have!

I loved the idea of songcraft weapons but it was always somewhat difficult to understand how they work. I made these Songcraft weapons a while back but never got any input. What do you guys think? Are they too underpowered? Op? Just plain not good enough?
EDIT: I have greatly modified how they are attuned and added a few more items. It seems a lot more balanced this time around. Also editted a few of the weapons already present. For those who don't understand music theory, here is the reasoning behind a few of these items. Check out the PDF above to see.
Warriors Sonata gets a +3 because there are usually three or four movements in a Sonata and is usually written for one instrument, sometimes with a piano accompaniment. Hence why it gets its bonuses when one-on-one.
Scroll of Etude, an Etude is a short musical composition, typically for one instrument, designed as an exercise to improve the technique or demonstrate the skill of the player.
Ring of Aleatoric Music, an aleatory is relating to or denoting music or other forms of art involving elements of random choice. There are a few other Music Theory ideas in these weapons but I'll leave it up to you to decipher.

NO SPOILERS, I PROMISE
I have to finally admit that I was fooling myself for the sake of convenience. I always heard filmmakers talk about the necessity of the theater experience. They cited distractedness. That's fine for me, I turn my phone off and guarantee myself free time everytime I watch a film in my room. They cited the magnificence of seeing and hearing everything in amazing quality. That's fine for me, I have good quality speakers and my monitor is very HQ. They cited the magnificence of seeing your heroes on a big screen, larger than semi-trucks. Alright, so I can't do that, but my monitor is still pretty huge. So I have that going for me.
The point is that I saw the appeal of going to a theater, but it was small compared the appeal of being able to stream movies for pocket change if I watched them often enough, the appeal of watching from my own home, the appeal of choosing the time I watch my film, the appeal of choosing the people I'm watching with.
There was a theater at my university that solved the problems of the price and the distance of going to movies, so I watched some films there. They only really showed more "hi-falutin" films like Blue is the Warmest Color and Io e Te. I didn't see the theater experience as being necessary then, so that further solidified my opinion that these directors were just lovingly looking back on their child-hood memories of Gregory Peck's towering face in Duel in the Sun or Star Wars's opening crawl, and overemphasizing the importance of that theater experience. Some more recent films have been given the same treatment, such as Avatar or Gravity.
Well then I decided to end my hiatus from dating after a nasty breakup and a hurt and mistrustful heart. But sorry ladies of TrueFilm, very soon after my heart mended, I got a girlfriend. Well, when you get a girlfriend, you gotta get a bus pass to see her. So my radius of acceptable travel opened up anyway, and in this damned city, the only fun thing to do on a night out, sober, is see a movie.
My first theater experiences with Sarah came. First Snowpiercer. Then Boyhood and Guardians of the Galaxy. My world remained unshaken after each of these. But then my she and I decided to see Gone Girl. She had never seen a Fincher film and I had never seen Ben Affleck's penis, so it looked like a night of adventure for us both. Little did I know that I'd have my opinions challenged that night.
Gone Girl was a wonderful film, up there with Zodiac as one of Fincher's best works. I'm sure I would have come to that same conclusion if I had watched it in my room, alone... but a new element was introduced to me that night. We all know and joke about the contagiousness of yawning in groups of people who aren't even tired. We know of how panic can spread in crowds even when there's nothing to be scared of. It turns out there is something equally contagious: nervous laughter.
There were funny moments in Gone Girl. I'm sure I would have laughed at those even if I had watched the film in my room; maybe I would have even groaned happily at the corny "that's marriage" line. But when we 100+ strangers were watching some of the completely serious and, for lack of a better word, "fucked up" scenes of the movie, we all did something I didn't expect: we laughed. Not only did I not expect it, for a FACT I know I wouldn't have felt that same thing in the theaters. And we didn't laugh because anything was funny, or because the movie was bad and we were mocking it. We all laughed nervously, like scared cavemen letting everyone else know not to worry about the saber toothed tiger.
I took an uneasy feeling home that night and I've been considering it on and off. Tonight I finally watched Nightcrawler and the same thing happened. Yeah, Jakey said some funny lines, but there we all were, laughing at some of the most horrible shit imaginable. This laughing, it was something I specifically could not get without the theater experience. There it was: an emotional and artistic quality of this film that I could have potentially missed out on. I let out an exasperated sigh before writing this. "Sigh. I guess they were right. The theater experience can make a difference."
When Scorsese sheds a soulful tear thinking about his connection to the big screen, and when Star Wars nerds kissed the ground in front of the Phantom Menace, I knew those were just special examples. But this nervous laughter was something that would've changed it for everyone.
I think this disappoints me because there's no such thing as rubato in film. There is a little bit of lee-way here or there, but it's pretty obvious that there's no way that a film can allow for alteration of the experience during a performance and have that alteration be just as much a part of the artform, in context. A musician may hold a note for longer, a stage actor may change his inflection for a certain line, a video game level may be experienced in totally different ways by completionists versus speed-runners. And all those differences in experience would be a part of the artform itself.
In the 20th century, the world of art music had a bit of inner debate about a subject similar to this: aleatoric music vs. total serialism. Aleatoric music, or chance music, allows, encourages, and explores the implications of the indeterminate aspects of a performance of music. A great example of this is John Cage's "Imaginary Landscape No. 4", which was a piece of music where the only instruments were radios instructed to change to certain frequencies at a certain time. Chance music accepted the factors that affect differences between performances as part of the art itself. While total serialism is a very hard thing to explain, all you need to know is that it was formed as a sort of dogmatic idealogy from a group of musicians who attended The Darmstadt School at some point, and its many composition properties led to a style of composition that exerted total control over every aspect of music. Every note had to played at a certain volume, for a certain length, with a certain articulation. There was no room for change.
FIlms to me always seemed to me something that could not be aleatory, by their very nature. Sure maybe Andy Warhol did something or another... I guess... look I don't really wanna know more about Andy Warhol, but pretty much everyone has a conception of film as having its artistic qualities completely predetermined. Some directors like Kubrick, Lynch, and Tarantino would actually make sure theaters used projectors and speaker systems to THEIR specifications. And considering the nature of film, they had a point.
Unlike chance music, unlike video games, and unlike stage plays, I don't feel that the external factors that affect my experience with film are "elements" of the artform itself. It's just not what film is.
I've always known this about film. It disappointed me that the only time I've watched Nosferatu, I watched it with such bad music that I couldn't enjoy the experience. Or, a better example:
When I first watched Pulp Fiction, I was a kid, and the movie was on a damaged VHS tape. Now, I immediately recognized the interesting narrative and the skillfully crafted dialogue of the film, but it wasn't until revisiting the film later- as an adult, in undamaged HD quality- that I realized the quality and craft of the imaged as well. Can you imagine? I actually went my entire childhood and adolescence thinking of Pulp Fiction as the film with "a great narrative, but 'meh' visuals", obviously unaware of the film's extraordinary visuals. This failure in artistic communication was certainly not Tarantino's fault, any more than it was Philip Pullman's fault that my school library only carried a damaged, stained, and muddy copy of His Dark Materials. The differences in my experiences in both cases are just not elements of that artform.
That's how, when I conceded tonight that I could have been missing something from Gone Girl or Nightcrawler, I came to a depressing realization. It wasn't just a few isolated examples of movies seen wrong... I may have been seeing some movies wrong my entire life. Sure, not all films would be that affected by the experience. Films not particularly intended for the theater experience, like films with DVD sales in mind or films made for TV, are obviously unaffected. Also, certain films just don't have qualities where theaters are that necessary. I just saw Io e Te in a theater surrounded by strangers; I doubt my experience would've been much different if I saw it at home alone.
But what about that nervous laughter from Gone Girl and Nightcrawler? What films could have elicited things like that, films where the "more correct" way to view them was surrounded by strangers to play your emotions off of? It hit me: Psycho. Sure, I've always thought the film was pretty well made, even interesting... I guess. I even mentally noted to myself, "boy oh boy, this Bates guy sure is creepy." But how much of that film was I missing by seeing it at home alone, with no nervous laughter to overwhelm me like a yawn, none of those biological, psychological, primal elements that were just as much a part of Hitchcock's design of the film as Herman's score or the legendary iris shot? And yet I always thought the film was "pretty good" and maybe a little overrated.
Shit, I could have watched Pyscho in a better way. How many films could I have watched in that better way? How many films will I not watch in that better way from now on? It's not like I can watch every film like that. Not every film is available to play in theaters. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough energy. I don't have enough time goddamnit, I have a girlfriend.
So unlike attending a Black Keys concert, unlike sitting through a high-school performance of Death of a Salesman, and unlike playing GTA V, sometimes the responsibility lays with me if I'm not grabbed by a film. And- because I now admit that the theater experience is indeed a factor of this responsibility- I am a bit bummed.
Shit, I shoulda stayed single.

I'm really liking what I'm hearing so far. His musical language is accessible and direct but it isn't Romantic pastiche by any stretch of the imagination -- it sounds exactly like it was composed in the 1960s even though it's easier on the ears than, say, Stockhausen or Berio pieces from that era -- a bit like Lutoslawski but without the aleatory techniques and loud outbursts.
Anyone else have any good impressions of his work?

—•— Preface —•—
Hello Drugs:
I generally try to avoid Reddit and falling back into old habits of committing my worthless and hollow prompts to the noise and clutter of a sub that doesn't need any more noise and clutter. So in order to distance myself from the thrill of the post, a perniciously soft addiction, I have elected to write this in a sort of (read: deliberately and gratingly) stilted and effete manner, the overwrought ponderousness of which will hopefully turn it into a kind of unsavory chore; so bear with me, and believe me when I tell you it is manifestly necessary; ultimately I will occupy much more tolerable portions of your time and patience by making this one tedious post than by polluting this sub with dozens of ambling shitposts.
—•— The Salient Facts —•—
I have orally administered acid on or around twelve separate occasions. I am reasonably confident in saying that the alleged acid was the genuine article, not some spurious research chemical. Of these dozen or so occasions, only three were above a threshold dose, and of those three, only two could rightfully be called a trip (what constitutes a trip of course being a slippery and interpretive area, but for the purposes of this post, further conjecturing on the nature of the fabled "trip" would prove tangential). The other nine or ten were nootropic forays, which almost goes without saying.
My first trip was two tabs' worth of acid, taken in high summer, around nine antemeridian when I first slid the tabs between gum and cheek. As much as an hour passed before I became sure I was in a state distinct from humdrum consciousness. There was a definite cognitive shift, but it was not on a conscious level. I felt like an operator of some sort, a demiurge in the animal core of my brain, was toying with the regular patterns and filters of my thinking, but not in a way that I could identify. The closest I came was thinking of the word "supple" which seemed to me at once a very odd and apposite description of my state. But for the most part these shifts were subtle, looming, ominous without the regular flavors of dread and anxiety. My internal dialogue became more sparse (antipodal to my expectation of florid existential musings) and at times almost ceased as I was held rapt by the visual effects. Yes, I did see the imbricate patterns, Amazonian wheels in stucco, hairs and birthmarks dissolving in out of my arm, clouds like marble-faced castles, grass like sinuous luminescent caterpillars. I was taken completely, as is expected. I spent most of the trip ambulatory, wending around the neighborhood (who says there is nothing beautiful in verdant suburbia?).
I listened to music throughout, and was taken by nothing especially, save Parsifal and Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They've Vanished (this could just be because I made an effort to focus on these intently), and was for some reason irked and unsettled by Sgt. Pepper's and Nas's Illmatic. Around six, I was no longer awash with visuals, which had rolled back into a simmer, visual noise. For some reason I was compelled to watch television. I watched Frasier and was disgusted, keenly aware of Grammer's charade, Hyde-Peirce's affectation, the destructive spectacle of the sitcom. I read some poetry, Pictures from Brueghel, and was moved, but no more than usual. I looked at a book of impressionist art and was stunned by the color, the majesty and innocence. I tried to sleep and could not, and instead wept over an indistinct lack of love, of closeness with those I cared about. I made some resolutions, slept. When I woke the next afternoon I could not remember them, but was feeling well, affirmed, changed in some small way.
Over the course of a few months the sensation of having changed dissipated. A bit seeping out every timed I succumbed to a joke at the expense of others, a night wasted on the Internet, an emission wrought by pornography, &c. The next trip some six months later, just one tab, and was much like the first, except the visuals were near imperceptible. I listened to 666 (The Apocalypse of John, 13/8) and vacillated through the whole rich array of human emotion. But aside from that merely a diluted and somewhat smoother redux of the initial trip.
—•— Burning Questions —•—
1—During the trip(s), I felt nothing approaching the sense of euphoria oft mentioned in trip write-ups such as this. It was a detached intellectual interest punctuated by passing moments of transfiguration. Is this relatively normal comportment, or peculiar to my temperament?
2—I was also very aware of the position of my vertebrae, my hair, and other seemingly aleatory parts of my body. Is this normal?
3—I did not feel childlike wonder. Again could this be a permanent idiosyncrasy or is it a matter perspective/attitude?
4—I could not bear to be inside or sitting still for most of the trip. Yet some of the things I wish to achieve through these trips necessitates sustained sitting down and being indoors. Is there anything I can do to remedy this restlessness?
5—Have you personally experienced lasting psychological changes due to your use of psychedelics?