Drone Music

I was listening to "Heaven" by Midwife & Amulets earlier today. It's 16 minutes of droney loop music. Not exactly my cup of tea, so I skipped ahead after ten minutes to see if any kind of variation might be on the horizon to justify the time I had spent waiting for something interesting to happen. This was to no avail, apart from some distortion to vary the texture a smidge.

As someone who makes electronic music, perhaps my complaining about repetition is ironic. I think I enjoy some music that could be classified as "drone," such as "Broken Wings" by Cowboys & Monsters. The difference between this piece and the previous one, as far as I can tell, is that this one only lasts for five minutes and has some cool beats to boot.

Anyway, my disappointment with "Heaven" got me thinking: What is it about this kind of music that certain people appreciate?

My initial thought is that this repetitive music is appealing because people want something to focus on. We live in an age of TikTok, infinite-yet-fragmentary commentary on X, DJs playing 30-second clips of music at sports events, and all the other usual things that social critics emptily moralize about.

The capacity to focus is not appreciated, even though it is essential to a rich interior life.

Aldous Huxley wrote an enduring (with some adjustments) passage in The Perennial Philosophy back in 1945:

The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire—we hold history's record for all of them. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio, is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. . . . It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions—news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music. . . .

Popularity

Concerning practical matters, popularity is often acceptable. That everyone in my community happens to drive on the right side of the road indicates that I ought to do the same, lest I should put myself or others in danger.

It is with artistic and intellectual matters, however, that popularity so often fails. Popularity is light and superficial; it floats about like dandelion pollen in the wind. The depths of man's creativity and interest will not be satisfied by lightness and superficiality, but by weight and quality.

Why Shouldn't We Talk About Politics at the Dinner Table?

We don't wish to talk about divisive matters over a meal because eating food among others is a social occasion that is best enjoyed cooperatively. Living in a polity where citizens have the right to vote for blue, red, orange, green, or whatever other colour creates division. We go to the polls every few years to roll the dice and compete with others, seeing if we can succeed in realizing our political aspirations. Even if these aspirations are constantly rolling around in our heads, we set them aside at times—such as meals with others who may not share our political beliefs—to foster social cohesion. "Social" and "political" are not synonymous, as you can have the former without the latter. Not talking about politics at the dinner table is customary.

But should this custom be accepted wholesale? Perhaps the problem is not so much talking about politics as it is talking about politics ineffectively. There's no more reason to ban political conversation in this context than there is to forbid the use of spoons simply because children tend to misuse them.

Of course, political participation is not necessarily graceful. Voters head to the ballot box, not a ballet performance. It is not an occasion for gingerly spinning, but for throwing fisticuffs into a cube of contradictory ideas.

Civil behaviour may not be able to render "equality"—"no quality" may be a more accurate term—but it covers a multitude of sins. One such sin would be name-calling. It is high time for indiscriminate insults like "Marxist" and "fascist" to stop being levelled against reasonable and ordinary New Democrats and Tories.

The Canadian federal election is upon us. What will happen tomorrow?

Separation of Church and State

How is a Christian who is situated in a society where church and state are separated able to form cogent beliefs about the morality of the state? For it would seem that the severance of church and state, when taken to its logical conclusion, would entail a Christian being severed from thinking about politics with reference to their religious beliefs. A Christian would then, in forming beliefs about the morality of the state, have to resort to some other moral foundation than that of their religion. Would this not inevitably result in an outright rejection of their Christian ethics?

Pacifism in Anabaptist Theology Does Not Oppose Old Testament and Government Violence

To my surprise, my last post appears to be consistent with Anabaptist theology, at least, one particular account of it. Lynn Martin over at Anabaptist Faith writes in a post: "Let me emphasize that by no means should the doctrine of nonresistance be interpreted as against secular violence or Old Testament violence." See the article "Early Church Fathers on War, Violence, and Pacifism" for more information if interested.