Don't even know where to start. Music? Tribal...healing? Sprirtualism? Rewilding?

[Maple Syrup Actual]

This quote came out of a really unrelated thread where for whatever reason I insisted on dragging it into this weird hijack but now I am hijacking my own train of thought and it's become so strange that I'm just going to put it in its own thread.

This spiralled out of a fairly innocuous (though interesting) comment:

On music: we do have some ideas on why people tend to uniformly like certain kinds of popular music. We like duple meter (typical 4/4 time) because we are bi-lateral, binocular, bi-symmetrical creatures that learn 4/4 time walking across the carpet between mom and dad, before memory. We like that 4/4 beat done at 120BPM, because it works with our biology; eg. walking pace/heart rate or while dancing, and it makes people want to shake their booty, then they sweat and get thirsty, then they buy all the overpriced drinks from the venues owned by vertically integrated liquor companies (as well, there is sone tie-in with 60bpm being a base for shamanic drumming, which in turn has been theoretically linked to the Schumann resonance of the earth, blah, blah, above my pay grade, etc). The interval of a minor third (sol-mi) is found in the folkloric and, especially, children's songs of every world culture, and we tend to identify major thirds as "happy" (in alignment with nature/dividing a vibrating string into 5 parts, 4 times the original vibration) and minor thirds as "sad" (dissonant/not an even division/ 6 parts at 5 times the original). At any rate, key centers and different color tones added to chords (eg. Maj or minor 7th) have each been codified and cataloged by the emotional valence they impart. So we do have some working theories on musical preferences.

The river thing? My wife said ‘river spirits’ when I read this thread to her. I dunno. I do know a bunch of songs where someone shoots/stabs/drowns their lover on the banks of a river, so it’s most def a thing in history.

I’ve long postulated that any normal human being who has been in the wilderness has had the experience of looking at a vast night sky, and thinking "whoa... who are we in this vastness, where do we come from, where are we going, and why are we here..." and other such spiritual triggerings—while people who only know light polluted big cities missthe trigger and behave accordingly.

Or not. Maybe I’m full of shit on that, but there’s some historical evidence to back the theory up.

When this came up I was focused on a slightly different aspect of the discussion and didn't get into what is actually my favourite part of the above: the general theme of shamanism, music, and wilderness. This is really strange ground for me because I have often said that I haven't got a spiritual bone in my body. But as I age I am finding weird stuff speaks to me that I never expected. Conceptually, I mean, not in the sense that random objects are now talking to me. Despite radically reducing my alcohol intake I have experienced no hallucinations (or any effects at all, other than thirstiness) even though thallucinations were the one thing I was looking forward to.

Anyway, I don't think I even have a great post to get this going, so instead I'm going to put a piece of music here and talk about it for a second.

This is a band, in a sense, from several countries in Europe. They use instruments based on artifacts found in ancient archeological sites in northern Europe, and work from the descriptions that people in ancient Greece and Rome wrote down to try to recreate the sound of tribal Europe, up to about a thousand years before the Vikings. This song I have been cranking up recently and I thought it might speak to you in this kind of complicated way: it's a blessing being placed upon a warrior who has been tied up and taken prisoner by his enemies and a woman is helping him to escape. I think this is quite beautiful imagery because you get the sense of the quiet, brave, supporting strength of this woman who is rescuing a man taken in battle...this is the kind of thing which always fascinates me because of the dynamic of the male and female roles, which clearly these people had understood in a totally beautiful way. The group's name, Heilung, means "Healing" and the idea is that by connecting to our ancient past (plus a healthy dose of reverb) we can spiritually heal ourselves, I guess? I frankly never had much interest in spiritual healing because I never felt that there was a part of myself that I was neglecting, although since I first discovered this group a couple of years ago I feel, somewhat disorientingly, that they are feeding a part of me that I did not realize was there.

Sometimes I do a little bit of volunteer...I guess I'd hesitate to call it "counseling" because I'm not any sort of legitimate clinical counselor and I am super careful never to give advice, but just to talk about my own experiences and how I got through them. I listen to guys from a particular and often troubled background and just let them talk and sometimes I talk about my own life if I think they might relate. Anyway if I get to know them well, sometimes I put them on to this music and the reaction is practically universal: I have found everyone to be moved by it on a level they did not expect. So I don't know if this is some similarity between their tastes and mine, or if it's employing some of the devices SS mentions above, or what. Or in the case of this song at least maybe it's just the motif of the woman rescuing the warrior that gets a grip on the particular kind of guy I'm talking to, I'm not sure.

I believe this particular song is in Icelandic; sometimes they sing in German, sometimes proto-Norse, early stuff had some English in it which personally I found distracting but I don't think they use it at all anymore.

Anyway here we go with a song only AD 1090s kids will remember:

[blues]

I like it. Reminds me of the sorts of archetypes discussed at length by Jung...sort of a genetic commonality evident across the universe...in micro and macrocosm.

Despite being European it reminded me of similar shamanic rites practiced by native Americans of North America.

I think it resonates in our DNA at a level that's primal rather than verbal.

[Totem Polar]

I can’t wait to check this out, and see what, if anything I have by way of response to this thread.

But I have to wait. I’ll be back tonight as soon as I tie up some things at work. Can’t wait to check out the tunes though.

[Cheap Shot]

This quote came out of a really unrelated thread where for whatever reason I insisted on dragging it into this weird hijack but now I am hijacking my own train of thought and it's become so strange that I'm just going to put it in its own thread.

This spiralled out of a fairly innocuous (though interesting) comment:




When this came up I was focused on a slightly different aspect of the discussion and didn't get into what is actually my favourite part of the above: the general theme of shamanism, music, and wilderness. This is really strange ground for me because I have often said that I haven't got a spiritual bone in my body. But as I age I am finding weird stuff speaks to me that I never expected. Conceptually, I mean, not in the sense that random objects are now talking to me. Despite radically reducing my alcohol intake I have experienced no hallucinations (or any effects at all, other than thirstiness) even though thallucinations were the one thing I was looking forward to.

Anyway, I don't think I even have a great post to get this going, so instead I'm going to put a piece of music here and talk about it for a second.

This is a band, in a sense, from several countries in Europe. They use instruments based on artifacts found in ancient archeological sites in northern Europe, and work from the descriptions that people in ancient Greece and Rome wrote down to try to recreate the sound of tribal Europe, up to about a thousand years before the Vikings. This song I have been cranking up recently and I thought it might speak to you in this kind of complicated way: it's a blessing being placed upon a warrior who has been tied up and taken prisoner by his enemies and a woman is helping him to escape. I think this is quite beautiful imagery because you get the sense of the quiet, brave, supporting strength of this woman who is rescuing a man taken in battle...this is the kind of thing which always fascinates me because of the dynamic of the male and female roles, which clearly these people had understood in a totally beautiful way. The group's name, Heilung, means "Healing" and the idea is that by connecting to our ancient past (plus a healthy dose of reverb) we can spiritually heal ourselves, I guess? I frankly never had much interest in spiritual healing because I never felt that there was a part of myself that I was neglecting, although since I first discovered this group a couple of years ago I feel, somewhat disorientingly, that they are feeding a part of me that I did not realize was there.

Sometimes I do a little bit of volunteer...I guess I'd hesitate to call it "counseling" because I'm not any sort of legitimate clinical counselor and I am super careful never to give advice, but just to talk about my own experiences and how I got through them. I listen to guys from a particular and often troubled background and just let them talk and sometimes I talk about my own life if I think they might relate. Anyway if I get to know them well, sometimes I put them on to this music and the reaction is practically universal: I have found everyone to be moved by it on a level they did not expect. So I don't know if this is some similarity between their tastes and mine, or if it's employing some of the devices SS mentions above, or what. Or in the case of this song at least maybe it's just the motif of the woman rescuing the warrior that gets a grip on the particular kind of guy I'm talking to, I'm not sure.

I believe this particular song is in Icelandic; sometimes they sing in German, sometimes proto-Norse, early stuff had some English in it which personally I found distracting but I don't think they use it at all anymore.

Anyway here we go with a song only AD 1090s kids will remember:

TLR

If I may summarize what I hear Misanthrope trying to communicate- "Maria has a great rack!"

On my regular PL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRg_8NNPTD8

[Maple Syrup Actual]

TLR

If I may summarize what I hear Misanthrope trying to communicate- "Maria has a great rack!"

On my regular PL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRg_8NNPTD8

Weird chicks with impressive racks are absolutely my jam...



I don't know, I guess I'm in an unfamiliar headspace these days (for reasons that are likely obvious).

But boy, I sure find myself indulging a taste for the more tribal end of the folk-metal genre. Or, as I like to call it, "Enya for metalheads".

[Dan_S]

@misanthropist


I need to become your best friend. What will that take? I do, in fact like western Canada, and wouldn’t mind moving. I have a big snow plow on tractor, so I ain’t steered of snow neither.

[LittleLebowski]

@misanthropist


I need to become your best friend. What will that take? I do, in fact like western Canada...

This.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

You know I'm not exactly turning away applicants, right?

This isn't a general message to the internet at large or anything but if we're talking core group here at PFC, anyone who finds themselves heading out this way has a standing invite. I will provide meat, drink, and guided motorcycle tours or salmon, lingcod, or halibut fishing. I have more space than people who would want to occupy it. At my wedding I invited everyone I could think of that might want to see me happy, and thankfully she showed up or the whole thing would have been a big waste of time and money.

Of course the cost of attendance could include really weird euro-shaman music at anything from conversational to nuclear volume: I recently set up the PA system my old rock band used to use, so I could run the new album from the above group on it. For safety reasons, family members and bunny rabbits were placed outside. They were still able to enjoy the album. Or at least, you know, experience it.

And to continue the dark nordic folk experience...

[Dan_S]

This.

You will notice, I have applied exactly one minute before you. Therefore, dibs.



@misanthropist in all seriousness, We should catch up. I’ll shoot you a PM here sometime.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

One hundred percent down for it; invite not made in jest.