Music for the New Enlightened Dark Age.

Postmodernism, metamodernism (and simulation) and the musical hope of the West.

If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: 'Why are you living?' life, if it could answer, would only say, 'I live so that I may live.' That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living.
― Meister Eckhart

I will tentatively propose the distinction between the Dark Age of the Enlightenment (aka Modernism) and the hope for a new/old Enlightened Dark Age. I am not entirely sure what I mean by that. Perhaps you know?

Though we might try to dig deeper and try to clarify our current situation, the more I do so often the muddier it gets. It is easy, all too easy, to get lost in the muddle of abstractions. I am ready at this point—almost—to give up on abstractions as a pernicious form of spiritual delusion. Yet I hesitate, and at the same time, strenuously resist giving it up. Could this rightly be called an addiction to abstraction? I try to pin down the world in the net of language and instead I get caught. Is it a fool’s game? Is abstract thought the cure or the disease? How else to proceed?

I am a musician by training which may explain why I can get so lost in my attempts to make sense of things through words. What appeals to me about music is that it can, and often does, present a deep understanding of life without necessarily resorting to words. Music, at its best, is realized metaphysics. It contains a deeper expression of the world, and of ourselves than words can ever reach. There are songs that reach into the depths, often very simple songs. We become the music while the music lasts, as T.S. Eliot put it.

I became a Platonist in college studying music. Since I had trouble sleeping even then, I would lie awake thinking about the mathematical relationships of the overtone series. (Which may be the very definition of a music nerd.) That these mathematical relationships could bring forth beauty that clearly changed me, and did so by revealing inner depths typically hidden, seemed meta-mathematical. Music could not be completely explained by purely human means or contrivances. Music, I concluded, has its roots in the transcendent.

From that, I recognized how out of tune contemporary music was (and is). Out of tune both physically (through the compromise tuning system of 12-tone equal temperament) and culturally, in how music was being used and what is often intended to express. Music was being used for destructive ends, e.g., to inspire lust, egotism, baseless ambition, etc. Harry Partch, and his attempt to put Western music back in tune, was also a big influence.

At night I would listen to Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening. An album that was recorded in a large cistern that had a natural 40-second reverb. This allowed me to sleep. The music is largely dronal in character. I would often wake up before I was fully conscious, enveloped in sound. This only added to my sense of the deep mystery of how music, contrary to most contemporary use, is capable of tapping into the transcendent.

Here is the album:

At the time it was difficult for me to find books, etc., to deepen (or even corroborate) this understanding. Most of my peers were humanities majors and under the full spell of the first great wokening of the late 80s, and early 90s. They were no help, and I think they were often baffled by my Platonic tendency. Thankfully, I was largely sheltered from this cultural shift in the music department. Back then it still was a conservatory

(Back then Bach was still the guiding spirit of the conservatory. Which is hardly a bad thing. It is a very good thing. I shudder to think about what the presiding spirit is now.)

I often went to the listening library to sign out albums (LPs back then) of anything and everything, e.g., avant-garde, ethnic music from all over the world, early Church Music, etc. The first time I really listened to Gregorian Chant--outside the confines of the movies--I sensed, much to my surprise, the interior deepening it induced. I even asked a trusted professor about this. His simple answer: that's what is meant to do. I took note of that.

I also studied North Indian Classical Music for three years or so (decades after I graduated college). Which, admittedly, is hardly even enough time to scratch the surface of this great tradition. What it did do, however, is confirm all my "Platonic" intuitions about the meaning and power of music.

I once had a discussion with a fellow Christian about what is the greatest music of Western Civilization. My first impulse was to say it was, of course Bach. Which is not a bad thought at all. But the real answer is the Divine Office.

I was thinking recently that any young composers should begin their formal training by forming a chant schola. They should spend a few years (at least) chanting the office. If possible, they should spend some time in a traditional Benedictine Monastery and really let themselves soak into that. Of course, being immersed in a living folk tradition from birth—preferably one's own —would probably help as well.

I often mention to anybody who will listen, how Arvo Part's music trajectory was changed by hearing Gregorian Chant in a local record store in the early 1970s. He spent 7 years or so trying to incorporate what he had heard and experienced. In this, I see a possible path out of our current musical darkness. But not only out of our music darkness. He is a model to which we can aspire. I think he has tapped into something very deep. A hint of what an Enlightened Dark Age might look like, or at least sound like.

For those interested here is a very perceptive and illuminating analysis of his music, see the video below. I think it corroborates why he can rightly, and helpfully, be called a postmodern traditionalist.

Finally, I will offer some excellent videos from The Living Philosophy Youtube Channel. These dig into the differences between Modernism, Postmodernism, and now, Metamodernism. Also, one on Baudrillard, which provides helpful background to Paul Kingsnorth's recent post, In the Desert of the Real.

Hopefully, all of this will help clarify rather than confuse. But is it worth bothering to try and integrate all of this? Will it lead us anywhere but to a new kind of befuddlement? Or would it be wiser to simply chant the Divine Office?