Fionn O Lochlainn

Music in Our 21st Century

2018 - olochlainn.com

 

 

What Do You Love About Music?

 

There are so many aspects to music I love: hearing Art Tatum’s virtuosity just makes my laugh, hearing Fats Waller pretty much always transforms my mood to one of an affable nature...hearing Jeff Beck play a solo is gonna make me wanna live even if I am in a state of abject depression or futility. Hearing Shostakovich's Symphony 5 in D minor sometimes brings tears to my eyes, drawing me into a state of profound introspection. Hearing L. Subramaniam’s mastery of sound and phrasing, makes me remember that all we have is our experience in the now, and that past and future abstractions just reside in our imagination…hearing Aretha Franklin’s voice assures me that we live in a spiritual world; rendering any leanings toward atheism as void. Hearing a song imparting ideas that challenge our system, gives me a sense of not being alone in my indignation, or pursuit of social transformation; even when around those that are struggling with their establishment conditioning, to the point of not wanting to hear, let alone, ask any questions…

 

I asked my father as a young boy "what is music?" His response was: "...a celebration of life". To this day I have not been able to fault that description, although sometimes an artist’s compulsion leads us to apply critical thought regarding social observation: which would be a disclosure, or transmission of personal experience and truth...

 

Music is known as a universal language, it speaks to us all with the potential to inspire many states of mind and emotional responses. In terms of hypnosis; music is also capable of inducing alpha, beta, or even theta states of consciousness, which serve to marginalize our rational mind: allowing the many inherent notions within music to make a direct connection with our subconscious, hence Plato's words: “Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.” “Give me the music of a nation; I will change a nation’s mind.”...emphasizing the power of music is never to be underestimated.

 

Our ruling elite are furnished with erudite knowledge as to the potential music has to profoundly affect consciousness and consensus, hence the establishments stringent control of what materials are allowed to become popular...just look at the consolidation of record labels, media corporations, radio networks, and since the 90’s, with Clear Channel’s monopolization of the live music environment; music venues and festivals...Our elite seem to have a transparently desperate need to control public narrative and mentality. Relating to the consolidation of music venues: One of the last bands of incendiary revolt to slip through the industry's barrier, was Rage Against the Machine: a band that broke through from building a live audience, despite the major labels refusing to acknowledge their existence, until they were so popular, that not signing them would have exposed the major label’s propensity for conceptual censorship. It would seem that, right now, the last thing our elitist rulers want, is another wave of mass consciousness, induced or nurtured by an artist or band transmitting revolutionary ideas; that are galvanized by the communal congregation of a concert setting.

 

Now we are mostly bombarded with vacuous, asinine, formulaic escapism in our corporate media, rarely does a new original artist that is controversial in any manner of rebellion get passed their system of conceptual screening. Most corporate mainstream artists are subverted into being minstrels; singing in the rat race choir, dancing to the fiscal whip of corporate social engineers that propagate the establishment’s collectivist narrative. In my estimation, this sad situation is absolutely by design: as much of these materials stupefy the impressionable minds of those self-negligent, or ingenuous enough to consume them. Rockafella’s infamous quote springs to mind: “I want a nation of workers... not thinkers”. A response to that is: sorry dude, despite the onslaught of one dimensional mind numbing drivel from your media machine, your constant broadcasting of deviously fabricated alarmist fear porn, your fluoride(Prozac) in our water, your common core assault on our education system, the proliferation of subversive curriculum in your academia, your standardization of the disharmonious frequency A440* in our music, your psychotropic medications that attack our brain chemistry, your chemically contaminated, genetically modified foods, and your mercury laced vaccines that attack our neurology, we are still thinking…and possibly more than ever...it's no wonder these globalist plutocrats want to censor our cyber space, and reconstruct our history, whilst insulting our intelligence with 'fact checking' sites such as Wikipedia and Snopes. Within our current blossoming state of discernibility, especially since the Smith-Mundt Act; no one believes corporate media anymore. The serfs are liberating their minds…and despite the socially engineered concept of agism in popular music; thanks to alt media, kids are now hip to all kinds of music, resonating with artists and bands of all ages, all generations and all cultures...

 

Our younger generation are seeing straight through the corporate facade. Pre-internet television culture, and it's weaning herd of mainstream media casualties are now realizing that they are on the wrong side of history: in generations to come, our progeny are gonna look back at the ‘corporate age’ with utter disdain, and all the corporate media affected simpletons are gonna be thought of retrospectively as luddites or barbarians. Kids these days are already thinking along those lines, in fact, I am pleased to say that what is now becoming considered as a mainstream mentality was alternative just a few years ago. Right now our modern mentality is not even represented in corporate media; to an increasing degree, the corrupt media moguls have lost their grip on the minds of most. Applause to us all, but now we gotta fight to stop them censoring and controlling intellectual materials on the net, subverting our estimation of quality with malleable numeric representation, or absconding our will and imagination with trivial ‘trends’. So if you all love great music, that is not conceptually contrived, or censored by creepy Bernaysian executives in consolidated big media, don’t let the corporate collectivist’s heist our cyberspace.

 

Among all these reasons and elaborations, I love the notion that music has the potential to liberate our state of mind from banal social conformity, inspiring insight, revelation and celebration.

 

 

Does Your Environment Effect Your Songwriting?

 

Absolutely, inspiration and imagination are usually stimulated from circumstance, observation and relationship

 

 

Describe Your Musical Relationship To Nature and the Natural World?

 

As there are so many variables in nature, there are a variety of ideas that could answer your question...Firstly, nature's immense beauty is an amazing source of inspiration, as is it's protection...many of my first songs were written on Hampstead Heath in Britain, where the contrast between nature and our post industrial urban cityscape made me question our society from a young age. I would write verses in celebration of nature's most meaningful splendor, and verses in abhorrence of our carelessness, wanton destruction, or merciless exploitation of natures many gifts: now I see why industry is being allowed, if not encouraged to perpetrate devastation on our environment, but back then, it was all so confusing, I had to research and educate myself for many years to gain understanding.

 

Sound is one of the most powerful forms of energy in our world…We are just scratching the surface regarding its potential in the healing arts. There are many plausible theories and successful studies, as to the use of sound as a source of energy. Sound waves actually create geometric shapes: as seen on a cymoscope, or within granular substance on a flat surface that is sensitive to resonance, in response to sine waves; generating variations of shape in relationship to any given frequency. It's absolutely amazing to think how sound frequencies affect biological matter, and the affect of sound on our psyche is constant; from the subliminal to the explicit.

 

As an electric guitar player... we see electricity in nature all around us: our hearts beat from an electrical impulse, lightning strikes, there is electro-magnetic energy omni-present in our natural environment: harnessing that power, especially on a stage that allows high decibel performance, induces a sense of absolute freedom, a sense of release, giving a guitarist such a broad dynamic range of expression; from the softest whisper to the most confrontational sound imaginable. There’s a smart reason great electric guitar players crank their amplifiers: those sound waves coming from a speaker, actually make your guitar vibrate and function in a completely different manner, yielding additional sustain and harmonic attributes that are not present when playing in a decibel controlled setting.

 

As an acoustic guitar player and pianist, natural ambience is part of any sound that is created, from the vibration of a string, to the resonance of an instrument's soundboard, to the multifarious variations of sound-wave reflections in any given environment. The very process of sympathetic resonance is also a marvel. The scientific principles of sound resonance in physics, could also be successfully applied to sociology, giving us insight and euphemism regarding our social dynamics and our capacity for experiential transference.

 

 

Describe Something that is both Universal and Specific at the Same Time in Your Work?

 

What Rupert Sheldrake would refer to as 'Morphic resonance’, and what Wallace Wattles would refer to as the ‘original substance': crudely summarized by the word ‘thought’

 

 

What Is It You Most Hate?

 

Hate is a strong word that I sometimes use, not realizing that such stigmatized words serve as affirmations, having resounding affects on our universe, that are not immediately discernible. In my highest nature I do not hate. Saying that, negative emotion is a perfectly natural, and essential response to the many aspects of our world that plague us; inducing a necessary process of critical thought. With the exception of apathy, what is generally considered as the negative spectrum of emotion, is sometimes, in actuality most positive, as it causes us to act. So as to affect a dis-functional circumstance, and transcend toward a satisfactory conclusion

 

Some things that precipitate my outrage, anger or grief are: Intellectual indolence. Avarice. Censorship. Nihilistic indifference. Bravado, vanity, jealousy, violence. The prohibition, attempted standardization, or pruning of our thought process by nefarious elitist institutions and think tanks. The authors of Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. Collectivism. Persecution. Cultural homogenization. Propaganda. Mind control. Alcoholism. Heroin dealers: both corporate and domestic. Socially engineered contention and phobia. Unnecessary antagonism. Obstruction or disruption of art and creativity. Technocratic subversion, intervention or prevention. The popularization of superficiality. Aspartame. Idiots that resort to intimidation. The Satanic marriage of corporation and government, with the use of bureaucracy to inhibit liberty, enforce unscrupulous laws and exhaust dissent. Unfounded arrogance. Pompous conceit. Ignorant smug dismissal of ideas sans-consideration. Interruption, Unnecessary scarcity due to our fractional-reserve banking system; manipulating fiat currency to create unjust economic disparity. Politicized pseudo-science. Political correctness. The Act of 1871. Medical tyranny. Sociopathy. Psychopathy. State appropriation of psychology; wielding the DSM(Diagnostic Statistical Manual) as a weapon of social control. Sodium fluoride in children's toothpaste, Chemtrails. Depleted uranium. Glyphosate. Reliance on corporation or institution to authenticate intellectual materials, those that instigate and profit from war, and worst of all: the exploitation of innocence.

 

 

What is it that you Most Love?

 

Nature, integrity, truth, art, music, passion, grace, sophistication, defiance against tyrannical dogmatic ideology or institution, intimacy, wise women, healthy children, community, the dispelling of fallacy. Informed consent–choice, humor, liberation of thought. A pursuit and attainment of quality. Conscious parenting, morality, courageous intellectualism, human resonance, conversation, philosophy, metaphysics, enthusiasm, optimism, stoicism, respect in communication. Resourcefulness, individualism, consideration, unfettered creative expression, loyalty, dancin', celabration, abundance, tenacity, lateral thinking, compassion, a kind heart, sensitivity. Real science, true history,  actualization of aspiration...Realization of significance. Virtuosity, Satisfaction, unconditional generosity, an honoring of agreement, those that negotiate by not withholding, co-operation, a sense of decency and dignity. Laughter, folks that refuse to be offended. Camaraderie. Mothers, Fathers, Brothers, Sisters...A woman that takes things in her stride. A man that has the class, and confidence to appropriately reveal his vulnerabilities, moments of mutual understanding, A groovin' rhythm section, subtlety–je ne sais quoi, Extra-dimensional sensibilities...Perfectly cooked eggs...Genuinely virtuous and authentic human beings…

 

 

What is Your Idea of Perfect Happiness?

 

Autonomous functionality, a harmonious compatible relationship that nurtures and inspires manifestation and performance of music... The idea of living in a post intellectual revolution world, where no one buys the deceit, where everyone is aware, and that awareness decreases our susceptibly to corruption, psychological manipulation, or subversion away from our absolute now, affection and moral compunction. Being in a situation that allows and encourages spontaneous creativity, and most of all; not being at the behest of someone else's whim or command.

 

 

Who Do You Most Admire?

 

Folks that have the courage to see beyond the establishment imposed reality, saying what they mean and meaning what they say; without fear of disapproval, rejection, or social repercussion.

 

 

Questions: Sue-Ellen Stroum

Also see and hear relating broadcast: Conversation about Music and Corporatism, Mariposa, California

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