primordialloop-blog

[primordialloop-blog]

Maya

you are speaking of mythology and metaphysics. much like monotheism and science, both spring from polytheism...paganism...ancient civilization's attempt at understanding the world. i, myself, am a polymath, a natural philosopher (an early form of modern science/physics). we are non-reductionist in practice, meaning that life is looked at as a complex system; where one must be in constant use of synthetic thinking (multi-level) as opposed to only analytic (singular, reductionist level) thinking, scale variance and non-linear thought, pattern recognition, and statistical mechanics in order to communicate effectively on all levels. non-reductionists know that all paths to to understanding the laws of nature reap some information, but no one will ever have complete knowledge - only more uncertainty, as ultimately - and i think even modern science is coming around to this - imagination (or "creation" as you call it) is all there is. and yes, science agrees with vibration playing a major role in phase transition of matter, from quantum to matter and back to quanta. but, where science is open to its ignorance of the relationship between quanta and matter, metaphysics and religion are not. the language becomes very vague in attempts to quantify the relationship. this is the rift between disciplines. so, yes, this "process" you speak of is what we in natural philosophy refer to as natural algorithms; and yes, they happen with or without our cognizance. it is a cyclical process that essentially makes up the "past" and "future". you and i agree, intuitively, if not semantically. HOWEVER, what i am not sure you understand is to the degree that fractals, chaos, and scale invariance work on our "present". i would suggest you absorb these studies into your mythology and metaphysical approach to understanding your environment. it seems to me that science and natural philosophy understands where you're coming from - i'm not sure you understand them, and why the work to understanding does not stop at "let it happen". of course, scientists and everyone else have no choice but to allow self-organizing processes to happen, we cannot stop them; but, we can AND DO engage with them. that is the use of imagination, to work it into action and shape it into a tangible present that the animal's senses can appreciate.

[primordialloop-blog]

money might sound good, but it ain't no melody

my fellow songwriters and recording artists: you can give an "expert" money to provide you the secret to making money in the music industry, but it won't work. your confusion IS the secret to THEIR making money in the music industry. their business model is scavenging off your misfortune and selling the mystery of your condition back to you. they're not going to tell you this, so that's why their "advice" won't work. i'll tell you, for free. your entrenchment in an amnesic music industry, that barely floats in a struggling economy, is what keeps you from making money in the industry. and, the panic blinds you to a more comprehensive, systemic understanding of the music industrial complex, and your place within it. what that "expert" will do is sell you some insight into a fraction of the system about which they understand, with a nudge toward the shifting of your focus - from music-creation to, say...touring, software, marketing, accounting, legal affairs, imaging, or etc. while these are all essentials of brand-building, they are industrial complexes, to and of themselves. they make poor content around which to create music; as you can plainly see in the way the music industry has run aground trying to be a sonic brochure for other products. every system needs a focal point. school has its education, society has its leaders, the world has its global economy, the moon has its earth, the planets have their sun, the solar system has its center of the Milky Way galaxy, and music has its melody. what is a melody? it is the living. it is an idea. it is not vibing to a track. it is not noodling. it is not music theory. those are fine tools for the conception of a melody. but, just as sex is not the baby -- a tool for conception of a melody is not the melody. a melody is an expression of a fear, a guttural reaction to being buried alive. the melody is summoned as a way of solving something within ourselves. you'll know it when you hear it, because as Billy Preston once said about hearing Aretha Franklin sing a melody, "It'll scare the shit out of you." it will set an entire system in motion: musicians will want to accompany it, producers will want to produce it, recording engineers will want to record it, models and actors will want to sing it, marketing executives will want to brand it, critics will want to write about it, and listeners will want to stream it. it is the engine of a healthy music industry. Now, of course, anyone can mutter a collection of notes that lack the vitality to do any of the above, and with the right amount of financial motivation (to replace the artistic motivation), that collection of notes can also force the system in motion. a few people might even make some money. but, there is no amount of success that a bad song in a good system will have that a better song in a good system could not outpace. mark it down: says here, everyone within a music-producing system will benefit - WITH GREATER REWARD - BOTH FINANCIAL AND EMOTIONAL - if the nucleus of that music-producing system is the quality of its melodies. just ask the music publishers, who've long had to carry the fiscal load for record labels. people haven't stopped listening to new music. so, why are music-makers broke? because, you are trying to assemble careers inside of a system that has been stripped of its idea-machinery, the infrastructure to support such notions. you can blame the phase transition between success and greed. it is a blurred line, so to speak; but once crossed, the prey falls victim to his own. capitalism is the cannibal that feeds on the successes it makes; that includes the music industry - through mass-production, a kind of high entropy-self-destruction that every system will push itself towards. mass-production is the primary goal of the businessman, the fleet-footed investor; and it works for him. it's the reason so many businessmen are disguised as recording artists. but for craft, craftsmen, and craftsmanship, mass-production is a march toward insignificance. so, while lots of people listen to lots of new music, the only system that monetizes the interactions are the ones who set the stage for the interaction. as a collective, that is not you. you don't control the dissemination of your music - i don't care what the culture of DIY tells you - the customer cannot find you at the bazaar. but, ironically, only you and the customer care about the quality of the music. it makes no sense. this is not a diatribe against mass-production. I, myself, have occasionally enjoyed its products. but, if you want to make money by making music in the music industry, you can either contribute accumulatively to the health of its offerings - or, each of you can feed off the desperation and ignorance emerging from its sickness, or you can do a bit of both. i am writing as a push back against this natural tendency for homogenization through subdivision and factored-out quality. what i am arguing is that YOUR industry, my fellow songwriters and recording artists, is controlled by non-musicians and inartistic people. they have made NON-MUSICAL ITEMS the focus of your industry's MUSIC production system. if you want to change that you will have to find a melody; or find someone who can give you a melody. that person is probably not in any music school. most music programs largely ignore the melody-driven "writing" part of songwriting. melody is probably walking down your street, on her way to a job she hates. she might be living ON the street, and you have to step over her on your way to a job YOU hate. melody might be ringing in your shower. melody is everywhere. find it. and then do what you do best; from wherever your particular talent sits along the spectrum of music creation. but, do not fuck with the magic of the melody. let it breathe. let it do the work of assembling the team it needs around it. the melody comes with everything. the story, the voice, the sound, the rhythm, the style...it's all there. your ONLY job, as the melody travels by you and throughout the music industry, is to usher each element out of its primordial soup; and to protect it.

[primordialloop-blog]

Freedom

man needs a predator. he comes apart at the thought of freedom. his predator has always been his imagination. it fills the holes of his knowledge - making him easier to manage by outlining the boundaries of his territory. jealous gods, evil curiosity, serpents, extraterrestrials, terrorists, immigrant rapists and foreign hackers - "leaders" draw these imaginary boundaries in order to point to new horizons. they give our minds something to chew on - from the unknown frontiers of science fiction to sprite-like fake news. *and then life imitates art* if human civilization truly desires a system that works for all of its citizenry it must improve the quality of its imagination, or what it does with its freedom. but, will it? fearful man seeks comfort through reducing his imaginary threats. suppressing imagination gives him the illusion of control within a reality where all frames of reference exist and are valid. if man is to know peace he must rid himself of the incessant need to be right, to be first, to be on top, to be significant, to matter... to be right means another must be wrong. to be on top means another must be beneath him. and even worse, to have these possibilities exist means that he, himself, could be wrong...could be beneath another. this nightmare - made up completely in his mind -scares the shit out of him. so, he limits the possibilities by gifting himself the illusion of direction, borders, importance, hierarchy. as it stands, man will exorcise his fear. he must, as it will be the last stripping away of imagination, set in motion by his mass production. he won't cure himself so much as kill himself...or change himself into a less frightful predator. - primordial loop

[primordialloop-blog]

interactions

individuals act as a collection of ones through interaction; thus forming a system of interactions. that system interacts with other systems to form a system of interacting systems, and so forth. you can only alter a system through manipulating the measure of its interactions. as an individual,  dependent upon a system of interacting individuals, you can only alter your individual experience by altering your interactions with other individuals. in other words, a society is a system much like any relationship. and just because you do not like the person you are in a society with does not mean you have not formed a society with that person; only that you have formed a dysfunctional one.

[primordialloop-blog]

We Live In A Mess According to Dr. Russell Ackoff, "A mess is a system of problems, interacting." Society has been trying to deal with its problems (racism, sexism, aegism, etc.), for some time -- with little to no progress. Instead of being dissolved within the system, the mess of problems in our society have been intensified and isolated by the (economic) system to which they are tethered. And, because this system fails to provide equal access to basic necessities for survival, it is predictable that problems as difficult to quantify as  hard-heartenedness have been isolated as the reason for the system's failure; when in actuality, it is the other way around: The system's failure is the reason for the intensity of these problems. Under threat of death (real or imagined), all animals will draw and rely upon artificial evaluation of physical and territorial differences -(hierarchy)- in order to meet their PRIMARY concern - survival, prosperity  [or, the ability to fend off all future threat to survival]. In general, when an animal is in distress it is less likely to be trusting, caring, empathetic - or to even seek out sources which might infuse it with these qualities, until its immediate concerns are satiated. It is the economic system, therefore, that needs redesigning BEFORE any of its emergent ills (its problems) can be solved or dis-solved. Here is Russell Ackoff on the educational system: "Reality consists of a whole mess of problems, interacting. In fact, reality is a system of problems. A problem is an abstraction, abstracted from reality by analysis. It's isolated from reality. Now, what happens when you take a system apart? It loses all of its essential properties. And therefore, when you take a situation, and by analysis, reduce it to the problems of which it is composed, you have lost all of the essential properties of reality and the essential properties of the parts (the problems)..It loses its essential property when separated from the system of which it is a part. And therefore, the problems that we teach people to solve are illusions. They're not real. They never have the interactions involved...How do you formulate a system of messes? And, how do you solve it? The answer is by design. Because, it is only through design that you move through the whole and deal with the parts...We have to start all over from scratch, and redesign the institution so that the whole is dealt with before the parts are created to fit the whole. You do not design the whole to fit the parts; which is what we're doing today." - Dr. Russell Ackoff

[primordialloop-blog]

fear of death the ability to feed oneself and his family has always been the primary human motivation. racism, sexism, narcissism, theism, a-theism, predation, deviance, sociopathy, psychopathy are secondary, emergent events - tools and conditions - deriving from the fear of not eating. the  fear of death… and meaninglessness. but, it is these emergent social conditions that have formed hierarchical structures in the sight-line between people - inhibiting their ability to empathize with one-another. if you are still struggling to comprehend why Donald J. Trump is the U.S. president-elect it is because you have missed that crucial point. equal access to natural resources, i.e., water, shelter, food, land - in a resource-based economy - will assuage the fear of death that triggers the animal instinct to shield himself through hierarchical societies. and if he does not need to build hierarchy in order to ensure that he eats, he will not then have the opportunity to distort, manipulate, and pervert its emergent qualities.

[primordialloop-blog]

shhh... "we often rely upon language to describe an encounter -- when the intuitive information gathered at the time of the encounter is more immediate, accessible, and accurate. intuition uses, at least, all the known senses to gather information about an encounter. language uses none of the senses and relies solely upon memory (which is hampered by the time it takes for information to move from our senses to the language-forming part of our brain). so, how would we communicate intuition more immediately, more accurately? is it through the knowing looks, glances that are passed between animals? a sort of telepathy that informs herd movement. what about music? I think it communicates intuition very effectively. still, the best answer to how we can most accurately communicate intuition . . . is probably that we don't have to." - Primordial Loop we were born in the sea, but found the sea too deep. so, we moved to the trees, but found the trees too steep. so, we moved to the streets, but found the streets too mean. so, we moved to outer-space, but found ourselves back in the sea. Van Hunt

[primordialloop-blog]

the best defense

together, we have created a society capable of giving rise to Donald Trump as a presidential nominee - and now we are fearful of the fulfillment of that promise? i'm reminded of a conversation i heard between a coach and his pupil. the pupil asked: "how can anyone stop Steph Curry? he's such a good shooter. he's scary." the coach replied: "you are right. he is such a devastating shooter. and since you know that, why put yourself in a position to where all you have to protect yourself is a fear of his shot? the time to think about stopping him is not after he has the ball in his hands; not after you've allowed him to get to his favorite spot on the court. it is before. and not minutes before. but, within many hours of practice, on quiet evenings of work when no one is paying any attention, is where the strength to protect yourself lies."

[primordialloop-blog]

independence

it will be interesting to see how hierarchy continues to seduce us. we've worn many uniforms: sexism, money, racism, ageism, religion, intellectualism, education, nationalism, state and city "pride". by what means will we be tethered to economy in evermore automated future 4th of Julys? maybe techno-ism? or, information-ism? no matter that being tethered to such vapid value systems  could never equal independence, democracy, or freedom. our differences cloud the deeper facts: that we all need to eat, sleep, shit, and commune in dignity. the game is to see who can hoard the natural resources that would allow those basic necessities to be satisfied - create scarcity (and demand) - and then sell our own natural resources back to ourselves, using an artificial economy, buoyed by warped values. and we do this to each other over and over and over again - using the mythical tools of hierarchy - and leaving a history of brutality in our wake. man is just an animal who, without a predator to keep him in check, has become his own; and is taking every other ecosystem down with him.