CYCLE FOURTEEN: MUSICAL HIERARCHIES
1. Since music is never more musical than when
religious, and hence metaphysical, the most musical kind of music will be Folk,
especially that which utilizes pipes, while Classical, Pop, and Jazz will
respectively stand to this as more (in relation to most), less (in relation to
least), and least musical kinds of music, bearing in mind their vegetative,
watery, and fiery departures from air.
2. There is no kind of music beyond solo piping,
since pipes are what most approximates to the lungs in their bag-and-bellows
construction, and hence to a meditation parallel in which one, as superman, is
one with metaphysical being of a sensible nature or, more correctly, supernature.
3. All other kinds of music are 'bovaryized' departures from a musical per se,
and thus stand closer, as has been argued, to economic, political, or
scientific alternatives to music in its properly religious mode.
4. If folk music is the 'voice' of the spirit,
then classical music is the 'voice' of the intellect, pop music the 'voice' of
the id (instinct), and jazz music the 'voice' of the soul, the latter three of
which exist at physical, chemical, and metachemical
removes, respectively, from the metaphysical essence of music per se,
viz. pipe-centred Folk.
5. Vocal music is not, and never has been,
strictly religious, since the voice, properly considered, corresponds less to
air than to water in its utilization of the tongue for purposes of singing
songs.
6. Vocal music is as distinct a category from wind-centred
solo music as dance music from strings-centred instrumental music, and suggests
to this thinker the bending of a political mode of music towards religion when
utilized in connection with the latter.
7. Such a 'bending' might be described as humanistic
or Marian, and will be even less religiously credible than strings-centred
instrumental music when it, too, is 'bent' away from its economic platform
towards religion.
8. Rock is effectively a subdivision of pop
music which stands to Pop-proper as its masculine counterpart, one necessarily
less vocal, overall, and correspondingly more instrumental, if usually in
connection with electric guitars.
9. There is indubitably a division, in pop
music, between vocal Pop and dance-oriented Pop, the former standing to the
latter as, say, Puritanism to Dissenterism, or
Conservatism to Labourism (Fabianism),
or
10. In this regard, we are returning to the
notion, expressed in some earlier texts, of an inverted triangle in which two
kinds of femininity 'lord' or, rather, 'lady' it over a correlative mode of
masculinity down below, which serves as 'fall guy' for negative criticism
within a broadly British, and hence heathenistic,
structure.
11. The 'fall guy' in this context is of course
rock music, particularly Soft Rock, which stands to our pop-music alternatives
as Anglicanism to Puritanism/Dissenterism, or the
Liberal Democrats to the Tories/Labour, or Association Football to Rugby
Union/Rugby League, or even pale ale to white and/or red wine.
12. Hence rock music is itself divisible between
that which would appear to accord with so-called 'Protestant solidarity' in
relation to an inverted triangle and that which, being 'hard', would seem to be
at loggerheads with such a watery predicament in one avowedly more vegetative,
and hence masculine overall, with, in consequence, a Catholic or quasi-Catholic
connotation such that, in more radical cases, causes the music to break away
from vocals altogether, thereby drawing closer, albeit from an electronic base,
to instrumental music per se, viz. Classical.
13. Such Hard Rock would accord with the notion of
'bullshit' as opposed to 'cowshit', and although it
would not amount to an economic mode of music per se,
it would be sufficiently masculine to be removed from the inverted triangle in
which Soft Rock languishes, in 'cowshit' fashion,
under the combined assault of pure Pop and dance Pop in what effectively
amounts to a feminine hegemony in which 'cowpiss' and
'cowpuss', corresponding to dispassionate and
passionate approaches to water (vocals), rule a heathenistic
roost.
