what is your definition of psychedelic?

[okeedoe]

How abuot religious kitsch ?

A good deal of holly images, especially those made in the last two centuries could be rated among the objects of bad taste(paintings of Christ framed with sea shells,photographic reconstrustions of saints...)It could be said that modern church art doesn't even exist today, but only an inferior imitations that blossom into kitsch.It is most probably that this Christian kitch is a testimony of a considerable deprivation of theological pith.

Interesting subject,that kitsch .Very nice,Susan.

What do you say,Red?You old buzzard.

[oldblue]

The last question was "What is the Soul? So I think the discussion is somewhat on track. Maybe oldblue wants to know if there is any "soul" in psychedelic music

So "psychedelic" is a mind state that enables discussions like this. We can think outside the box. The Governments and Religions don't like this as they would like to keep your thinking narrow, so you can line their pockets with money without so much whining and groaning and not question their warlike activities, and arms sales.

"Soul" is what makes the fish bite

funny how thinking outside the box sometimes just puts you further in it.


Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane was aware there was something beyond labels at work in psychedelic music that made it so.

“I don’t know what psychedelic music means,” Marty Balin, 23-year-old leader of the Jefferson Airplane, said when his group was in Toronto this week. “I think the term was made up by the press and the record companies.”
“They’re talking about the San Francisco sound, too. I don’t think any one San Francisco sound exists. There are so many people there, all doing their own thing. They just do what they want to do. There’s a feeling, a philosophy though. That affects the music.”

Through this realization we place ourselves at a point where it is understood that, in order to produce music that is psychedelic, musicians have “to perform for themselves and for their audience” in a way that would have them “going into the soul of the music.” Similarly, Jerry Garcia, “with his band the Grateful Dead, spoke a language of the deep soul and the wandering psyche through his guitar.” By playing in this way, musicians would not only go into — but would create and project and become — light. What resulted would be “a certain kind of soul-spirit music. . .bordering on religious experience,” according to Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart.

[usedtobebabson]

I don't agree that thinking outside puts you back in. It frees you from the inside.

We know what Marty Balin and Jerry Garcia say about psychedelic music. I keep wondering oldblue, what do YOU have to say about it.

[redrabid]

What Garcia and Hart described is recognizable for every musician. This is what you are aiming for, this is what makes musicianship so rewarding. But it is a rare experience and it is difficult to say what makes it happen. But when it does all members of the band loose themselves in the music and a strange, mindless unity between the music, the band and sometimes even the audience comes into existence for a short time. Having been a professional musician myself, I can assure you that it is an awesome experience, better than sex. One could call it "religious" but only as a synonym for transcendental. But to spoil the fun, it has nothing to do with what kind of music you are playing, even musicians of classical music experience it. It is not limited to San Francisco or psychedelic music and so I find it useless when you try to define "psychedelic".

[oldblue]

I don't agree that thinking outside puts you back in. It frees you from the inside.

We know what Marty Balin and Jerry Garcia say about psychedelic music. I keep wondering oldblue, what do YOU have to say about it.

come down from the barricades and you might see your perspective better.

i say what i mean and i mean what i say.

[oldblue]

What Garcia and Hart described is recognizable for every musician. This is what you are aiming for, this is what makes musicianship so rewarding. But it is a rare experience and it is difficult to say what makes it happen. But when it does all members of the band loose themselves in the music and a strange, mindless unity between the music, the band and sometimes even the audience comes into existence for a short time. Having been a professional musician myself, I can assure you that it is an awesome experience, better than sex. One could call it "religious" but only as a synonym for transcendental. But to spoil the fun, it has nothing to do with what kind of music you are playing, even musicians of classical music experience it. It is not limited to San Francisco or psychedelic music and so I find it useless when you try to define "psychedelic".

did i say it had to be a specific kind of music. being so, however, makes it a specific kind of music.

For Neil Young, as well, the matter seemed to manifest itself musically in some greater and unnameable force or feeling:

It’s transcendental transcending the moment. What’s psychedelic about my music is the fact that when the music is really happening, we’re all just tuned into some force that’s fuckin’ drivin’ us and we’re all going together — that’s psychedelic.

To Young, being psychedelic is making music with heart and soul in a way that transcends the musicians and their individual skills. Just as painters shrugged off the strictures of realism in favor of gut response, so musicians like Young began looking for the moment when expression transcends thought and preconditioning. As a result, psychedelic music is

impressionistic and open to interpretation. It’s about moods. It’s about consciousness. It’s about space. It is generally not about noun-type things or conventional feelings. In the ’60s it was music made by people at the frontiers of consciousness.

[redrabid]

To be honest, Okeedoe, I don't have clear ideas about religious kitsch. To make tempers flying again I could say "What did you expect, religion is kitsch" (yes I can do the trick too). But even I doubt whether that is true. "Religiousness" certainly is. Maybe faith is more tainted by atheism or rather science than most people want to admit. Maybe they lost their believes and now cling to the idea of being religious and as a result make bad art. But then bad religious art is older than the rise of atheism. Italian and Spanish painting of the 17th century produced lots of it. Guido Reni comes to mind.
Also I have problems with the distinction between high art and low art(kitsch). It sniffs too much of a calvinist attitude towards art. Kitsch could be in the eye of the beholder. As you see wild guesses.

[redrabid]

Young c.s. overestimated themselves if they really thought they were a new breed of musicians. Every musician tries to make music with heart and soul, reaching for that transcendental state.
It was one of the first things my teacher in singing lessons taught me (she was a classical operasinger by the way): Don't think, don't try to control, let it go, surrender, let the music guide you. But your conclusion "As a result psychedelic music is impressionistic..etc " is very clarifying I think.

[oldblue]

But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain


In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality. The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bulls-eye which confronts him. This state of unconsciousness is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skills, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art.


an opera teacher, huh

[Susan Butcher]

If psychedelic music aims for that "mindless unity", then it certainly is distinct from most popular music where the purpose is making money. Or conferring status and prestige, in the case of opera in this country.

[usedtobebabson]

I don't agree that thinking outside puts you back in. It frees you from the inside.

We know what Marty Balin and Jerry Garcia say about psychedelic music. I keep wondering oldblue, what do YOU have to say about it.

come down from the barricades and you might see your perspective better.

i say what i mean and i mean what i say.

Well oldblue, I don't take to aristocrats and you are sounding more and more like one. I don't care for your lofty words. My advice for you is free your mind and your ass will follow.

[redrabid]

My, my, all this talk of searching for the frontiers of consciousness doesn't lead to openmindedness. What an unfair derogatory remark, only because somebody is a "opera teacher".
She was in fact a good opera singer, but probably a better teacher. She realized that I, being a rock musician, didn't need the technique of an opera singer, so she adapted her lessons. She made me a much better singer but also a better musician (I was a drummer), thanks to her teachings that resembled the comparison you made with the archer a lot. She tried to turn me on to opera, but didn't succeed completely. But as I am a sucker for good vocals I did discover that well sung aria's can move me deeply. Rapture!

[Susan Butcher]

It's a dilemma. Once you've seen there's a unity, political conflict seems counter-productive. But I doubt that the world can be saved merely by self-contemplation.

I admit I don't like listening to opera. Choral music and comic operetta, yes, but not that loud Italian stuff.

Bad religious art has a greasy luminous quality not unlike pornographic art.

(Sorry if this post is a bit fractured, but so is this topic, and I'm asleep when you guys are chatting.)

[oldblue]

I don't agree that thinking outside puts you back in. It frees you from the inside.

We know what Marty Balin and Jerry Garcia say about psychedelic music. I keep wondering oldblue, what do YOU have to say about it.

come down from the barricades and you might see your perspective better.

i say what i mean and i mean what i say.

Well oldblue, I don't take to aristocrats and you are sounding more and more like one. I don't care for your lofty words. My advice for you is free your mind and your ass will follow.

may the baby jesus shut your mouth and open your mind!

[redrabid]

Sleep well, Susan, a good sleep seems to give you great ideas. Religious art as the believer's porn. I like that. Did you ever see Bernini's sculpture "The ecstacy of St. Theresa?