lux

"Lux, let me understand something, so since you say that every human manifestation is social, if the masses were to commit mass suicide, would you follow them??" ....but what the H E L L does this statement have to do with what I'm saying? Man has an (also) social nature, drill this into your head. Social exists where there is relationship.

Guys, you don't understand me. I study Sociology at university, I'm sorry for you...Man, above all, is many things in one, so besides being a social being, he is also individual AT THE SAME TIME (so are you happier now?) Two disciplines were born just for this, Psychology and Sociology. Now, I don't know if you know people like Comte and Durkheim, just to give you an idea. But dear alias, if right now you are talking to your girlfriend, your mother, your daughter, your father, your dog... you are demonstrating that you are a social individual. Not just social, no no, but sociality is also one of your characteristics. Like mine. Like ours. Even when you're alone watching TV at home, you are a social type. Where there is relationship, there is sociality. Comte said that religion was born precisely for the need for sociality among individuals.

NO, NO, not yet, as far as I'm concerned. When I put on a Nick Cave record, I listen to his work of art because it is his child. Whether he composed it thirty years ago, I couldn't care less, because that record is THE LIVING TESTIMONY of what he created years ago. Of course, I think that every song could sound different from how it is, even the most beautiful one by Nick Cave (take Foi na Cruz, for example). It is perfect as it is, but it could have been different from how it was created, precisely because there are no limits to expressiveness. But it was created this way, so it has gone down in history this way. If Nick Cave, today, abhors that song or not, I don't really care. His self created it, and it has departed from the one who created it. And now it lives independently from Nick Cave. The work is always "expelled" from its artist. It’s like childbirth. Obviously, from a strictly historical perspective, even a slow-witted person can give birth to a rock masterpiece. If it's historically so. Because man changes every thousandth of a second. If an "ordinary" person, in a quarter of an hour (when struck by the so-called inspiration), manages to give life to what he wanted to say for the past 60 years through a guitar, then he has given birth. He has given birth to a work of art (if it has positive artistic value). Then maybe he lived his 60 years as a mediocre trader, but in that quarter of an hour, he was someone different from himself (different from the essence of a mediocre trader).

"Now coming to the art that rightly shouldn't give a damn about the social"... but if art is social... how can you decontextualize something that is deeply human, like art? If man is a social being (and there is no doubt about it), every manifestation of him will be social. The terms SOCIAL; HISTORICAL; CULTURAL are concepts inherent to mankind (even if only at the speculative level). You will never find an object in the world in front of which you’ll exclaim "Look, here’s history!" It's not like pointing to a pen or a sheet of paper. History is part of man. "CHRONOS is indeed a lie of the social"?? Come on, I AM an element of history, because 15 years ago, I was significantly different than I am now. Everything that changes from what it was before is history. And society is not a blasphemy or a status to be avoided. Because, even if you wanted to, you couldn't be anything other than a social being.

The institution has value for me only as a tool that humanity has created to survive in its daily life and to establish an organization. I have never given ontological value to the institution or to any public administration. I have been against cultural formalities since I was an infant, and now you arrive, but you don’t know me, nor can you deduce much from my posts. If we say the same things, all this debate is pointless. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Well. You take, among the multiple propositions of that opening page, the final one that says "all art is perfectly useless." Come on, don’t tell me? Did I ever want to instrumentalize art by chance? Art is an end in itself, and it always will be. It justifies itself, as it is. But that doesn’t change the fact (and here lies the difference between you and me) that it is also a social product. Even the asshole with diarrhea that you shit out in the morning in the toilet has social potential, you know? I’m sorry to tell you, but if you are of this world, you are also a social being. Unless you live in the Hyperuranium.

I firmly believe that one must fundamentally engage with the work itself, because it is in the work that the artist's expression lies, it is in the work that the artist's self is displaced, and that is what needs to be judged. I've never spoken of morality in art; it is absolutely against my thinking. Morality is left to those who should deal with it. What interests me is the concept of expressiveness. Take The Mars Volta, for example: to me, they eventually become self-indulgent, an intellectual approach that does not lead to something truly communicative (as I see it). I've never discussed critiquing emotions; I couldn’t care less about the emotions you or Sanjuro feel while listening to the Black Album; those are yours and personal. In fact, the only way to give a SENSE (sense can only have meaning in relation to culture, whatever it may be), a general index to refer to in "organizing" what we have in front of us, is the historical criterion. Criticism itself is an absolutely cultural approach. Regarding the artist, woe, I repeat, woe to being influenced by the opinion one has of them as a person when judging their artistic product. It may be interesting to delve into their life and "get to know" them, but an album, once created, lives a life of its own, and the artist as a person becomes secondary (should become secondary). That the canons of human thought evolve (dialectically), you’re not the one to discover that; someone had already established the tripartite dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis some time ago (a certain Hegel, do you happen to know him)? The canons are in continuous change, especially in a "post" era like ours. Did you really have to come and tell us that?

It is understood that the Objective absolutely does not exist. I am far from mediocre, speak of what concerns you, poor thing.

After such a long, redundant, baroque, and ultimately pointless post. First of all, I'm talking about Rock, so I’ll limit myself to that. The social, CULTURAL, and historical aspects are fundamental for any criticism. If we want even the slightest critical approach. The fact that life ultimately does not reveal its meaning is something even the walls know. Man bites his own tail day by day, giving himself institutions, hobbies, interests, jobs, professions...to avoid thinking. To avoid realizing that there is no meaning, or at least it does not manifest here. Man survives WITH and THANKS to his daily life. But I have embraced the historical, social, and cultural aspect, you know why, you fool? Because it is the ONLY method that can provide a MINIMUM of OBJECTIVE criteria to untangle oneself from the web of subjective constraints and from the "Lebenswelt" (the reality that cannot be known because it is inexplicable to man). Ah, you are still ridiculous. If you take away history from music, you remove the sense of evolution itself. On "meaning," I could talk for hours, but you are too lost in "your" Lebenswelt. Mundanity has nothing to do with it. By writing this, you admit that Vic’s review is what it is: a subjective manifestation that has no pretensions of even the slightest (mind you, the slightest) objectivity.

Well, when it comes to women (or at least some types of women), maybe he's not entirely wrong... but in the Rock scene... MMM... doesn't inspiration exist?? What?? Why the hell should I care if Hetfield does charity work, or if he's a Serial Killer? As a listener, I judge the final product, the album. Besides, otherwise, to judge an album, I'd have to become intimate friends with every artist. Come on, really. Who are you to judge a mediocre person or a non-mediocre one? What do you know? Maybe they are mediocre today, but what about yesterday? Besides, we're all mediocre at least for a couple of minutes during the day; you can't be a philosophical intellectual for all 24 hours. You've gotten yourself tangled up in a discussion that's WAY too big for you. Oh, and of course, Kill 'Em All is a MASTERPIECE.

Alias, are you getting big on Sanjuro's shoulders? Heheheh