A Conversation with Daemonic Virtues: Music as a Philosophical Tool
If a philosopher plans on using music as a tool to express their viewpoints, what is a task the philosopher should accomplish before doing so?
The philosopher must accept the mundane aspects of existence are meaningless. Until the philosopher lets go of the mundane life, this individual will continue to be drained by what they clearly do not like. He/she has to come to the realization the mundane life is what has been holding them back from pursuing their dreams the whole time. The mundane life you’re living doesn’t allow you to turn your dreams into reality and prevents you from truly exploring and examining the world for what it actually is. You are bound by things called responsibilities, but just think for a second and you’ll quickly come to see those responsibilities aren’t yours. As much as the average person takes pride in working or having children, they know deep down they have decided to do those tasks just to maintain the image of being a productive member of society. Your productivity is measured by your labor and the ability to raise children in a world you are clearly weary of, but what’s extremely ironic about this is when you’re doing those tasks for long periods of time, you become lazy.
Detaching from the mundane allows you to become more productive since you have way more free time to complete goals you’ve had on your own mind for years. The legacy you wish to produce exists in your philosophical works and how you act on those philosophies instead of producing a family to continue the natalist cycle. As a philosopher, you inherit real responsibility and that responsibility is influencing others to turn your theories into action. It is not enough to create theories. Modern philosophy is failing as a result of self-proclaimed philosophers writing theories to impress pseudo-intellectuals and academics when they should be reaching out to the common man and focusing on philosophies that are legitimately tangible.
What is the benefit of using music as a philosophical tool?
Music is singlehandedly the greatest tool to communicate with mankind for one good reason: the sounds you hear have the power to make you feel many emotions. Western philosophy in the 21st century relies too much on literature and looking at the world from an overly analytical perspective, but those same philosophers are always wondering why the common man holds no interest in what they’re saying. The academic jargon and elitism that’s present in Western philosophical thought forces people to see you as someone who is detached from the human experience. In general, a lot of people do not have the time to process philosophical literature. Academic philosophers are oblivious to the fact the average person becomes disillusioned with school early and it’s even more apparent once you start dealing with marginalized groups. School was draining for them so if they try to read philosophical literature while still being disgruntled about their experiences in the public school system, the reader will perceive what they’re reading as boring or an aggravating exam.
With music being used to express philosophical thoughts, philosophy becomes accessible and if you’re really invested into the field, philosophy is meant to be for everyone. The listener has the chance to visualize philosophical ideas based on the compositions you have created and from there, they’ll start thinking more about the world around them along with themselves and eventually see they are also philosophers. In all honesty, everyone is a philosopher. The majority of people in Western society are philosophers in denial though due to them looking at philosophy as a field focused on analyzing concepts instead of connecting with the world. The titles of your compositions will paint the first couple pictures of them too. Philosophers who want to be musicians should be clever in the way they create titles for their compositions and the compositions have to evoke a unique atmosphere. After all, philosophy is innate.
Philosophy has been bastardized into an academic field filled with out of touch individuals and theory addicts, but academics can never define philosophy as a whole. Man has been a philosopher since the beginning of time. Theorizing about society or the individual and coming up with solutions to the problems man faces doesn’t require you to get a degree. The individual must feel first. A philosopher cannot deny their emotions. Without your emotions, you cannot produce a thought in the first place.
Can a musician come into being through producing music? If so, how can a musician engage in this process?
The musician needs to keep in mind coming into being requires you to investigate what makes you distinct from other individuals before they attempt to fully go through the process. Musicians who accept those requirements will now know that their musical influences should only serve as inspirations to record music. The main problem which exists in modern music is artists letting their influences “possess” them in the sense where they are desperate to re-create the albums they have recorded. After a while, the music becomes stale because the musician is so possessed, they believe they have the power to inherit the experiences and emotions their favorite artists have when they clearly don’t. You haven’t been through their trials and tribulations. If you want to set your mark as an artist, you have to focus on releasing your own viewpoints, experiences and emotions.
Re-creating an album created by someone else is only you trying to become another person because you lack the courage, vulnerability and authenticity to express what you are thinking through soundscapes. Listening to avant-garde music and deciding you want to create music that can be labeled avant-garde does not make you a creative either. Separate yourself from pretentious attitudes. As a musician, it is up to the listeners to describe your music and explain how it makes them feel. Your goal as a musician expressing philosophical thought is to simply produce soundscapes for the concepts you are constantly brainstorming about and force whoever is listening to explore those concepts. When you are coming into being, the individual realizes the importance of removing self-doubt to achieve intellectual empowerment and by empowering yourself in this manner, it becomes much easier to de-territorialize the body.
In the Black American community, it is normal for people to embrace genres such as rap, go-go or R&B. However, you have people within the community who plan on producing music outside of what’s deemed normal. Do you have any advice for upcoming musicians in the Black community that are just starting out in other genres of music?
The first thing you should do is remove the guilt of embracing other genres in case the people in your environment have stigmatized the genres of music you plan on producing now and the best way to remove the guilt is to basically detach from the superficial standards that exist within the Black American community. The superficial standards you attempted to abide by as a child regarding music exist because of people being intellectually defeated and intellectually sheltered. The sheltered mindset stems from a racist and Christian fundamentalist society demonizing Black artists who pioneered certain genres in the past while praising artists of other races who recorded the same music, so this led to a large number of Black Americans distancing themselves from those genres but as time went on, Black Americans don’t really know why they refuse to be open minded to genres outside of what they’ve been hearing all their life. They hear other genres being described as “white people music” or “Satanic” and automatically latch on those talking points to blend in with the crowd.
Knowing where the superficial standards originate allows the musician to create music without holding a grudge against other Black people and most important of all, you no longer have to rely on musical limits. For those who were raised on rap and R&B, you should know artists usually stick to specific sounds and lyrical themes. Artists in both genres deviating from what is seen as the standard are seen as the outcasts. The main ingredients to recording music outside of rap or R&B though is learning how to play instruments and studying what you plan to play until you finally feel it is time to make music. Compared to popular music, the music you seek to record is very time consuming and because the genre you’re playing isn’t popular, you have to develop more creative ways to promote your records.
Find good studios that can engineer your music or teach yourself how to engineer and build a home studio. If you aren’t too familiar with other ethnicities and cultures, you will have to become familiar with them since they will gravitate towards your music the most. Please remember the world is much vaster than the Western racial binary. It is useless to produce music to appease people belonging to one race or subculture because you are going to attract everyone.
Musicians constantly promote their music in order to be heard, but for the philosopher recording music, is it necessary for them to promote music applying the same tactics as someone who’s seeking fame would?
Philosophers must avoid applying the typical methods used to promote one’s recordings, especially when the philosopher is in an online setting. The society we live in is filled with people who have incredibly short attention spans. According to them, it is best for you to release your art every single month. If you aren’t being consistent enough in their eyes, they will lose interest in your art very quickly. Art is disposable to them and they are so selfish, they refuse to acknowledge the philosopher/musician has a life also. We are all going through internal suffering and in general, art takes time to create. Nothing can be rushed or else, the musician is going to be overly critical about their work. Another reason it’s unnecessary to promote your music on social media is once you reach a certain point, people online will only see you as an idea that they’re desperately trying to figure out. Even when some people know you’re a person, they begin seeing you as mysterious and they believe they can get to know you by making assumptions about you.
The other side of this is you’ll attract people who have surface level understandings of the concepts you cover and treat you like a celebrity. All of a sudden, they forget you’re a human being expressing complex thoughts through instrumentals and you want those complex thoughts to be transmuted into actions so people can truly master life. While people may claim they want some guidance in their life or gain inspiration to think more, social media shows their fetish for personalities more than anything else. You are dealing with unsure people acting like they are incapable of properly talking to other human beings or denying their own autonomy. Your music is built to start serious conversations about the issues we have been facing for centuries. A philosopher’s legacy should be determined by the number of thinkers they have influenced.
Building a cult following is a sign of failure. Most of the time, those followers only exist to parrot your ideas and those followers have no idea how you even came to those conclusions. Avoid making social media as your main platform to talk about your music. Release your music on platforms you feel are best suited for you that do not rely on interacting with a lot of people and write your thoughts out. Connect with people in real life that show interest in philosophy.
Genres like classical and jazz are normally learned by memorizing music theory and while music theory can be helpful, is it really a requirement for a musician to learn how to play classical or jazz in that manner?
Relying on music theory to learn classical or jazz is relatively new. During the development of those genres, composers weren’t obsessed over musical notes and what they mean. Music theory is way better to learn if you are studying the field to gain knowledge about all music. True music theorists know by studying the different musical notations, the theorist has the ability to appreciate all genres of music. Today’s classical and jazz composers have no idea technical music is played from the heart. Look at the way music theory is taught. Similar to philosophy, music theory is usually taught purely from an academic perspective and another thing modern composers are completely oblivious to is that music theory in the West is incomplete.
The information you’re absorbing normally highlights Western music from the 18th century. Music as a whole has a multitude of expressions. Western music composed in the 18th century cannot be the standard for the entire world and it can’t be the standard for the West either once you acknowledge other ethnicities and how different their music was compared to composers of European descent. Technical music isn’t taught by memorizing notes, but by making mistakes and experimenting. You remove what individuates you from other musicians every time you compose music based on outdated standards you hardly care for yourself.
Black metal is a genre of music that has been brought up in philosophy discussions, but the majority of those discussions focus on black metal being used as a vessel to express Satanic or occult philosophy and ignoring other lyrical themes in the genre. Would you like to discuss what is ignored in philosophical discussions surrounding black metal?
Satanic/occult lyrical themes and imagery gain the most attention because Western society has always been influenced by Christian fundamentalism and the average person isn’t knowledgeable about the anatomy of evil, which is why people in society have to create boogeymen to believe in instead. Ideologies painting black metal as a “Satanic” genre have convinced themselves in order to practice anti-nomianism, you must be a Satanist or Occultist but, in all honesty, anti-nomianism comes in many different expressions and the most rebellious methods to question society aren’t necessarily spiritual. Just by using your music to voice your opinions about nihilism, existentialism, depression or war alone, you are recognizing the importance of transgression/anti-nomianism. Spiritual matters are abstract. You are dealing with experiences that can’t be measured by anything objective.
Issues such as nihilism or depression exist in the physical world and people either fear or misunderstand those subjects. Your creativity does not have value in this society unless you are producing music that caters to the average person’s comfortability. Speaking on the taboo scares people, but do not confuse their fear with legitimate hatred for you as a musician or person. The black metal musician must comprehend others may fear them because in all actuality, they fear themselves. They are curious about the taboo aspects of life themselves and whether we have a purpose or not, but they have mental barriers that have yet to be removed. You should also take into account they see people who are asking questions about life the way you do as deranged. People live for reputations. Society claims they want you to be yourself and to not be afraid to voice your opinions, but once you start voicing your opinions on controversial concepts, you automatically become the outsider.
Believe it or not, it is somewhat dangerous to examine taboo subjects with an open mind in the society we live in. You are an outcast who has the potential to connect with other outcasts and motivate them to deal with controversial ideas in a healthy manner. The common man looks at some individuals like they’re committing crimes for thinking of suicide, questioning one’s purpose in life, or even leaning towards logical positivism but as a black metal musician, you’re here to ask these questions in your music: what inspired us to think the way we do now? Are these ideas genuinely harmful or have I been deceived into thinking they’re incorrect because the people around me live in fear? If some of the ideas are genuinely wrong, how can I unlearn them without criminalizing myself? How can I properly withdraw from the many egregores that exist in society?
