Musical Dynamics

The best music has a tendency to harmonize an emotional state with the progression of notes that are juxtaposed with lyrics that the listener can relate to on a very personal level.  With or without lyrics, the very best music can even transcend emotional states and put the mind into an escalating trance of cosmic consciousness.  This state of mind can best be described as the mystical realization of enlightenment, that is, the becoming of one with the rhythm of the universe.  This is the kind of music that overwhelms the brain with an auditory “orgasm” that shoots adrenaline down the spine and grows goosebumps on the skin.  These songs might sound unusual or even horrible at first, but once we become accustomed to them, they take hold of our sonic memory and show us pathways we never knew existed.  The more you listen to this music, the better it becomes. 

The art of music is the most expressive of forms because sound waves can reach the most amount of people at a given time.  But music is more than art too; it's an auditory metaphor for the mathematical synchronization of the equations of complex systems, often coalescing into brilliant, beautiful, celestial storms of emotional states, or systematic representations of nature.  This is best represented by the mysterious urge to dance a certain a way when you hear a type of music.  Dancing is music in three dimensions.  It extends one-dimensional melodies and written notes in two dimensions to encompass a complete form, like everything else in physical space.  All dances imitate dynamic systems that become emotionalized, using the body as metaphors to express them.  The universe itself is dancing to songs of cosmic unity, played by an ethereal dimension of waves, and the waves flow through the space dimensions like the sounds of an orchestra through an amphitheater.  It is through music that these quantum waves of dynamic change manifest into the supreme language of the universe, the instrument of God, the eternal song of existence. 

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

2016 addition: 

 

On re-reading Infinite Jest, I can say that it is an infinite grower. Six years ago, I didn't think I'd have any nostalgia for the characters or the writing, but somehow it all got stuck in some corner of my mind that wouldn't let go until I gave it the full amount of attention it deserved. This time it was far funnier than I found on the first read. The humor has more of a satirical, dark edge that I suppose made me uneasy in my "purple prose" phase. David Lynch's influence was a lot more transparent as well, as DFW sought to reconcile "the incredibly mundane with the incredibly odd" (quoting him in an interview when asked about Lynch... exact wording is imprecise). I have no doubt that I will return to this book many times, for all its strange stories and reflections on the modern age. The novel's overarching message seems to be that there is something very wrong with the world and our role in it, but we choose not to face that problem by distracting ourselves with drugs and entertainment. 

 

2010 original: 

 

It's better to approach this as a series of interrelated short stories rather than a novel with a linear direction. The dystopian concept was interesting, and there is no shortage of phenomenal writing, but I'm not sure it has the type of progression to make it one of the all-time greats, as many people are claiming. The novel digresses too much to make the core series of events appropriately clear, and many parts could have been edited to make it shorter and more accessible. I can see how this might be one of the best books of the last 30 years because so many people can relate to all the characters suffering from addiction and depression. I didn't find it overwhelmingly funny like so many others, and on this point, I think DFW is largely misunderstood- this is a deeply sad (there are about 10 suicides or attempted suicides in the book) and pessimistic book that illuminates the psychology of addiction. On the phenomenal writing I've compiled a list of favorite or most memorable parts: 

 

Truly amazing passages that leave you in a dumbfounded trance: 

227-240 Joelle’s overdose 

321-342 Eschaton chaos 

380-386 Mario’s film interpretation of the rise of president Gentle 

692-698 Hal's anhedonic depression vs. Kate Gompert's psychotic depression 

787-795 Thanksgiving @ Joelle's parents' house 

 

Other great parts worth reading: 

27-31 Hal’s visit to the “conversation doctor” (his father) 

55-60 Gately accidentally murders a Canadian VIP 

68-78 Kate Gompert explains marijuana to a young doctor 

138-140 The bricklayer’s bizarre accident 

157-168 Jame’s Incandenza’s father narrates life in the 60’s 

367-375 Young girl’s foster father sexually abuses her sister 

395-398 The joke 

601-619 The fight 

701-714 Hal watches Blood Sister: One Tough Nun 

775-782 Maranthe & Kate at the bar 

827-845 Gately’s visitation from the ghost of James Incandenza 

846-851 Gately’s vision of the angel of death as Joelle 

958-960 Mikey’s story 

967-971 Barry Loach homeless 

972-981 Drug binge chaos 

 

fn 269 A friend of Orin’s relates Avril’s creepiness 

fn 324 Pemulis’ eccentric, hilarious dialogue in the locker room 

Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky

This is an enlightening book about the American mass-media propaganda of the 1960s through 1980s. Even though it's old it still applies to contemporary issues, as Iraq has often been compared to Vietnam (although Vietnam had a much higher magnitude of significance). What's most similar is how the government used the media to make a strong case for occupying these territories and proceeding to terrorize their populations for the dogmas of "freedom, justice, equality, etc.", when all-the-while they were really just masquerading as puppets for corporations, who ordered the delivery boys to fetch the goods- namely resources, cheap labor, and more populations for globalization and consumerism. 

The book starts with the U.S. funding of terrorist regimes, such as the ones in Central America during the 1980s. It outlines how the media ignored the terror imposed by governments that were beneficial to U.S. investors (Guatemala, El Salvador), yet were critical of Nicaragua, a country that just wanted to govern without U.S. corporate interests. Then it briefly dances around eastern Europe before devoting a very large portion to the outright massacre of southeast Asia. Vietmam is covered first, then the heartbreaking destruction of Cambodia, an innocent country that had nothing to do with anything before the United States deliberately destroyed every single village with the excuse that refugees from Nam were hiding there. As I read this, I was reminded of a scene in Apocalypse Now where these Cambodian children were huddled around a traitorous American ex-captain who was hiding there to escape the horror of Vietnam (ultimately ending up in an even more horrifying place). The children seemed to be happy as they looked in on another dubious American captain that had been caught trying to assassinate this man. To him the traitorous captain read various excerpts from Time magazine that were being published about the war, and, needless to say, the excerpts about our rightful place in the area was stupendously bogus.