Muse-spotting in art and music

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I'm playing with a concept right now where I don't know if it's just a great magical-thinking tool or an actual gateway to really open my life up a lot more to the threads of the unseen that weave through, in, and around everything we do.

I'm considering the idea of looking at every piece of art, hearing every peace of music that I find a striking soul connection with, and considering the possibility that when I'm inspired by such thing it's literally the muse within it smiling back at me.

As a former musician (or at least a musician on extended hiatus) I'm used to the best works sort of just falling into place without effort and some of the seemingly mediocre works being herculean tasks. Similarly the stuff that really stirs you and has a lasting cultural memory is stuff that reaches deeper and really feels like something of higher evolution is leaving a sigil, a signature, or generally doing something in a way that isn't dependent on time - ie. that same muse could look out through it's artwork at any given moment or peak through the snares, kicks, basslines, or vocals of the song it inspired.

You'll see it in the character, craftsmanship, and atmosphere of a particular piece of art or painting, asserting itself between the brushstrokes or in the nuances of how a sculpture, piece of pottery, or freeze holds its rhythm and flow. Similarly the muses may dance in the cadence of the kicks and snares, they may hold themselves in the grooves and silences, and they can have you rapt in the playful personality coming through the vinyl, the disc, or the wav/flac/mp3 out onto the speakers.

Not to jump off on personal music propaganda too far but part of what I love about dnb, and particularly the soulful side of what gets classed as dark or minimal, is that you have a very strong anthropomorphism flowing through the better made stuff - some now but fast and loose back in that 1997-98 time frame when it was much more analog powered and everything was thick and heavy with creamy overdrive/compression and dripping vinylistic flavor as if it were a futuristic future-tribal prayer to the media that it was printed on. It's as if the groove of the kicks and snares, the way the basslines grip them, etc. is like a being peering out, engaging you in banter, mostly very friendly with some bratty banter in with the flirtation (especially in the raggae-tinged stuff like Digital's productions and some of the older Die/Krust/Suv Full Cycle work).

A few days ago I felt a very visual image of Dj Krust's muse jump out at me through Soul In Motion and I decided to explore sort of chatting her up a bit more literally than I usually would. I won't post a youtube link cause I feel like that would be pushy but again - in the example like other music, its the stuff that seems to have a very nuanced and beautiful anthropomorphism breathed into it that gets you headed on that path where the layers in a piece of music start peeling apart in that you'll hear genre and culture of genre on one level and something strikingly different on other levels.

Even 15 years ago, in my raver days and before I really had any firm conviction on what was above and beyond, I used to love sort of considering the power of this as well but in less magical terms in more of a 'Wow what is that factor' sort of way. Hearing sort of a blue-collared and red-neck swagger in a UK acid techno track almost going bluegrass within some very ripping and cooked down 303 lines (Chris Liberater et al type stuff) or hearing a really dark churning track of some type with something almost final-fantasy-like in a very mellow and peaceful way going on with the pads in the background almost inaudibly but deliberately within the same tune. Seemed like those contrasts and contradictions ripped whole vectors open and rather than making a tune to be intepreted in one way you were given a pair of axis and a whole cartesian or even 3D plane to explore.

Now on the magical path I'm considering using that effect a bit differently. Hearing it, or seeing it in the case of visual art, I think it would be well worth exploring to literally consider these kinds of pieces of music and art as their own kind of sigil. Sigils in the full traditional sense, like Bardon sigils and the like, remind me of an entity leaving their phone number, putting their thumb and little finger to their ear and mouth and saying "Call me if you feel like hanging out on my level!". Seems like edutainment, play and learning amplifying each other hand in hand, is what your more benevolent entities are all about. With art and music they do a bit more - it's like they leave an entire phone. That's partly why I can't help but feeling like its an even easier doorway to open ones self up to magical thinking, what I tend to think of as taking as much guard as you can down in relationship to the tendency to forcibly defining a thing, let it jump off into what in worldly terms we'd deem pure fantasy, let it expound itself a while, and only THEN start nuancing the observations with some semi-objective treatment.


All of that could be daft or it could be worth exploring - finding the muses wherever I find beauty and not just enjoying their autographs but enjoying their company, their consultation, and their sage advice.


I'll leave this thread and its purpose open ended though. Anyone who wants to chime in with music, agreement, questions to ask a Gravediggah, etc. all are appreciated.

[magari]

As within, so without.

[akimbomoss]

Cyber I think my music tastes are close to yours. Check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUeK27F7TE

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Cyber I think my music tastes are close to yours. Check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUeK27F7TE

It's some neat half-time and it sounds like it's mid/late 90's at that. I know Ivy Lab were talking about going back toward exploring half-time stuff and I do wonder how many other dnb producers might do so as well.