trauma and dissociative state relationship

(GOOGLE SCHOLAR)

(AMAZON:BOOK SEARCH:SCIENCE:TRAUMA)

(DISSOCIATIVE STATE AMAZON)

      Dissociative states are caused by trauma.  Dissociative states are also caused by religious worship, or taking substances.  It's likely that trauma, being eaten by an animal for example, preceded any other sort of dissociative state.  In the Greek sense it was a physical wound.


       If you just focus on the question of whether or not trauma was suffered by any individual, I think it simply explains any strange behaviors that result.  It certainly doesn't absolve people from being responsibility for their action, but it's a pretty easy way to absolve SOCIETY from any guilt.  People are traumatized, they do crazy shit, we still hold them responsible for it, the end.


    But generally if you're asking a variation on the question "How could someone do something like that?" The answer is probably because of something that happened to them in the past that makes them behave improperly in relation to others.  I think it is likely that childhood trauma effects chemical distribution in the brain as it relates to impulse control, so that people with prior trauma can't stop themselves from doing things that they know they shouldn't do- kill someone, for example.

#sxsw the defining moment of an era

is there anything more emblematic of "right now" then the following five characters:

#sxsw

it practically cries out for an ensemble comedy/drama.

The Culture Industry by Theodor Adorno

I've read the essay The Culture Industry by Horkheimer & Adorno in their book, The Dialectic of Enlightenment but I didn't know you could buy a book by just Adorno called, "The Culture Industry."  Published by Routledge.  Adorno is wrong insofar as he wrote before the emergence of what I like to call indie capitalism, but he's right on everything else.  As far as it goes, his word is gospel.  (AMAZON)

The Quiet Before the Storm

The Work of Fans

     When you get right down to it, the real work that needs to be done is by fans.  Bands: There are PLENTY of those.  One of the defining characteristics of artist/audience is the reversal of ratio from something like 1000/1 to something more like 5/1 or maybe 25/1.  The shift in this ratio has been brought about by the absolute rise in number of artists, and what I suspect is absolute decline of music listeners, although the same effect can be demonstrated by simply holding the number of fans flat and raising the number of artists.

     If you look at historical antecedents in popular music, you see a very, very, very low audience/artist ratio during the origination period of any specific genre (taking it all the way back to a time and place where being a musician was considered an immoral way of life.)  The early pop musicians and recording artists were simply local musicians who broadened their appeal to a national or international stage due to their relationships with, first, booking agents, and second, record labels.  The emergence of new styles of music, as well as the churn of the music industry itself, creates opportunities for new artists, but that process is independent to the ratio I'm describing.

        Certainly, the defining characteristic of artists who are introducing themselves today is the utter absence of an available, attentive audience.  Also, the individuals who might have, historically speaking, comprised an early, attentive audience (i.e. fans) are now themselves artists.  Despite any protestations to the contrary, relationships between artists are essentially antagonistic.  All ideals that diverge from harshest Darwinian "dog eat dog" stance should be treated with a skeptical eye.  This shift also creates an antagonistic relationship between the artist and the remnant audience, since the lowering of the artist/fan ratio results in truly spoiled, indifferent potential fans.

       It's predictable that under the circumstances described, artists are going to need the traditional tools of the music industry even more then they would have at a point with a higher artist/fan ratio.  If you can imagine certain alternative rock acts in the 80s and 90s.  Producing recorded music in that time period was a more cumbersome process.  It's fair to say that in this area, computing power, like in every other area of modern life, has had a hand in the ultimate lowering of the ratio of artists/audience.

    One obvious consequence of this analysis is that those who do consider themselves as "fans" of artist x need to think more about how their personal economic decisions impact the artist they are a fan of.  Obviously, if you don't give a shit about artist x, it doesn't matter if you steal from them or don't buy cd's anymore etc.  I'm not talking to you, asshole.  I'm talking about the people who do "want to help,"  those who "care", etc. It's an either/or proposition.  If you are a fan, you need to think about whether your financial decisions are helping the artist.  If you are a writer, these are issues that need to be written about.


    

Twitters from SXSW about Dum Dum Girls Show

Also- New T Pain video "Reverse Cowgirl" Amazing.  




 My only comment is that the people waiting for Dum Dum GIrls to finish so they can see the XX have clearly never seen XX live before.




These are all tweets from the last fifteen minutes:


Dum dum girls and the xx at the french legation....
Trying to act like you don't like the Dum Dum Girls.
Only took 3 songs & epic feedback for the crew to finally get the Dum Dum Girls soundmix … almost okay. And--feedback again! 
Dum dum girls= joy division vs raveonettes. LOVE.
 Dum Dum Girls covering Rolling Stones. Awesome.
The dum dum girls are precious!
Dum Dum Girls: hipster hot, well-honed lo-fi sound,and well-executed vocal harmonies - 3 strikes, they're a new favorite band
Dum dum girls not quite yet sounding as sharp as they look
The Dum Dum Girls sound like "Psychocandy" with gorgeous vocal harmonies *thumbs up*
No line dum dum girls on now — at The French Legation Museum
 Watching Dum Dum Girls at the babelgum lawn party.
 The dum fum girls at the French Legation Museum
Unimpressed with Dum Dum girls. Mostly because they are not the xx
Dum Dum Girls at the French Legation Museum. Victorian outfits and Danelectros. Hm.
I'm only sitting through the Dum Dum Girls to keep a good spot for the XX, but they're actually not bad!
Dum dum girls. It's not about the words. It's about the gothy threads.
s this Dum Dum girls? Are they an hour behind already?
Dum Dum Girls covering "play with fire". Pretty cool.
Time for dum dum girls and the xx
Checking out The Dum Dum Girls and The Xx. (@ Lawn Party - SXSW w/ 3 others)
Dum Dum girls taking 18000 hours to soundcheck. I want the xx!
 Right up front for dum dum girls :)
Was gonna leave...but Dum Dum Girls just walked onstage. :drool:
Started yawning during Yellow Fever. Finally, Dum DumGirls up next
 Dum Dum Girls on hill stage now (I think they didn't introduce themselves). Hot hot hot. I like. Good crowd:)




EXHAUSTING!!! YOU DONT EVEN HAvE TO GO THERE!!!

(video) Sham ROCK in the Gaslamp

Did Shark Attack DJ?   It was open all the way till midnight.

Rock Band: "Alex Chilton" by the Replacements

Way to go music industry. I blame you for Alex Chilton's death.  I hate guitar hero.

Todd Kroviak Calls Out Music Journalists & Bloggers for Laziness

     Man what's in the water over at San Diego City Beat?  This week, Todd Kroviak attacks lazy music writers.


     Here's my favorite line:


    You’re not an ethnomusicologist. If you were, you’d be out doing field research instead of opining on the newVampire Weekend album.


    (SAN DIEGO CITY BEAT)

La La Vasquez video

Maybe you like it, maybe you don't, but no hating here.  7" out next week on Captured Tracks of course.

SXSW Exists

      Does SXSW actually exist: that is my question.  In the affirmative: I know people are there, and there is alot being written about the events there.  In the negative:  I have never been there;  All of the schedules have an air of unreality about them 12 PM Surfer Blood, 12:10 Best Coast 12:20 The Walkmen 12:30 The XX.  There is also a corresponding film and new media festival.  I suppose it's a good way to connect with advertisers or for people who are in the live show business.  Personally, I get sensory overload just reading about SXSW on line.  It's all very overwhelming.  My personal suggestion to SXSW is to throw a design/consumer products festival into the mix.  Get Target, Walmart.  "What's the hot toaster oven at South by this year?"  "OOh- did you see the new dishwasher that premiered at SXSW?  The designer is from Japan."

What Chinese Mummies Tell Us About The Location of Proto Indo European

          This article in the New York Times yesterday is about some 4000 year old Mummies that were dug up in the western part of China.   Scientists have finally agreed that the mummies have dna that indicates at least some of them came from Eastern Europe.  The obvious conclusion here is that these people were the ancestors of the speakers of a language called Tokharian/Tocharian.  Scientists possess written documents in the Tokharian language circa 500 to 900 A.D., but little else is known about the culture.

        The Indo European language family is thought to have a "western" branch and an "eastern" branch that corresponds with the present geographical language of the speakers.  For example, Italian, Celtic, German are "western" indo european languages, Sanskrit is "eastern."  Some linguists also identify Hittite as belonging to neither branch but representing an earlier diversion.  Hittite was spoken in Anatolia (Turkey).

     Scholars are forever trying to locate the "original" home land of the Indo European language family.  Some people say it is in the Balkans, some say it is the plains of Central Asia, some the steppes of what is now Russia.  The theory is that all of the indo european languages left this central home land and spread east and west- according to the location of modern speakers of the various indo european languages.  The Tokharians destroy this theory because they are geographically in the East, four thousand years ago.  Current scholarship puts the Hittite migration in about 2000 BC, and the entrance of the Greeks was five hundred years later, as was the entrance of the "Aryans" into India.

    Thus, these mummies were dead and buried either at the same time or even before the Hittite's came to Turkey.  It's amazing that this entire culture- one that could be the ancestor of the languages we all speak today, could be buried beneath the sand for two thousand years before people even dug it up.  It makes you wonder what else we don't know.

The Importance of Aphorisms in Music, Writing & Speech

Shirtless 50 Cent: Aphoristic Master with his 50 Rules of Power.

    


 Aphorisms are the general category for "saying," "maxims,"etc.  (wikipedia)

       If you are in the business of persuading audiences, then you would be well used to study aphorisms of all cultures. Buddhism, Hinduism and Confusionism are all rich sources of aphoristic thought.
    
      I try to come up with my own aphorisms in my spare time.  Here's one, "The intelligent man does something, the wise man, nothing."

Succesories Example: Focus

      Generally speaking the validity of an aphorism is entirely dependent on the audiences decision to accept it as valid.  Although today we associate aphoristic thought with writing, it is almost certainly more effectively when spoken to a live audience.

      Attempts to create series of aphorisms continue down to today.  Two days ago, the front page of Yahoo! featured a story on the "48 Rules of Power" and described their influence on rapper 50 Cent (!) (AMAZON), though a more long-running contemporary example are those "Succesories" posters that you see parodied.

      People who write those books or make money off aphorism generally are smart people.  People, on the other hand, who buy those books or form that audience, are, for the most part, idiots.  Tell me that you don't have to be a complete moron to appreciate the Successories posters in a non-ironic fashion. Tell me that 50 Cent is not an idiot. Think about the entire greeting card industry in the United States.  Big business.  Aphorisms.

Pitchfork Changes "Track Reviews" Feature to "The Playlist;" Drops Rating

    It's a change so new that they haven't changed the url ("http://www.pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks) but Pitchfork changed the name of their "Track Reviews" section to "the Playlist.  Here is the difference:

       For the last year we've used this space for track reviews, but starting this week we're switching things up a bit. We're still going to be presenting and discussing individual songs here, but we won't be rating them, and we're not going to be talking about songs we don't like. This space is where we'll talk about songs we're digging that we think might be worth your time. So we've renamed the section to go along with the new focus. We'll still be covering songs from a wide array of styles and sounds, and we'll still be designating the best of the best as Best New Tracks. So dig in and, as ever, thanks for reading.

       Seriously- thank Marduk that they are dropping the ridiculous "track ratings."  The Pitchfork "7" has already become the Rolling Stone "three stars" of the internet era.  As I've said here before on many occasions:  Numbers, lists, numerical rankings- What, do you work for IBM in the 1950s?  The only people who are into grading and ranking music are WHITE UPPER MIDDLE CLASS MEN who are college graduates and are underemployed so they spend all their time obsessing about music.  That's your indie rock elite, ladies and gentlemen.  White guys who went to school in the upper mid west.  They love their numbers, their charts, singers who are sad and angry like them, and they are kind of scared of women.  Oh, and they started liking hip hop and dance music about a year ago.

BRONSON on Pay-per-view WATCH IT

"Magic? You just pissed on a gypsy in the middle of a field... it's hardly the hottest ticket in town."

Book Review: The Gypsies by Angus Fraser

(AMAZON)

      Gypsies: we're all familiar with the aesthetic, the music, maybe a little bit of the history- but what does anyone really know about the gypsies?  After all, they do not have a written language, suffered greviously during the holocaust and, as this book discusses, have been subject to pretty agressive legal action and persecution on a continuous basis in western europe from the 1500's.

     Turns out, what we know as "gypsies" are mostly the Rom, a group of gypsies from the greater Romania area who didn't emigrate out of Eastern Europe until the 19th century.  These are the gypsies who emigrated to America.  There are, in fact, multiple strata of gypsies.  There are those who travelled into Europe as early the 1500's- those groups were persecuted, especially in the 17th century, and most of them "went underground."  The relationship between the early gypsies and the later gypsies reminded me of the relationship between Jews from Germany who came to the US before the Jews who came from Eastern Europe later on: Tense.

    After the Rom, there were several other larger clans that emigrated out after them, spreading gypsy groups through western europe into the 20th century.  Fraser also distinguishes between Gypsies who are ethnically descended from some kind of Indian caste (they speak a variation of Hindi derived from Sanskrit, have an elaborate purity ritual that resembles Hinduism), and indigenous "travellers" from various countries in Europe who either existed prior to gypsy arrival (the tinkers of Ireland) or were inspired by the gypsy example (groups in the Netherlands and France).  Everywhere, gypsy life was characterized by a nomadic existence on the fringes of society.

       In Fraser's view, the main characteristics of "what is a gypsy" are 1) observance of the Romani purity ritual- not washing clothes and food dishes in the same sink, female segreation during fertile periods.  2) language descended from sanskrit with lots of loan words from languages like Hungarian and Romanian.

     The English language continues to absorb words from the Romani language.  One current example in the United Kingdom- the word "Chav" used to describe the track suit culture of the housing project is dervied from the Anglo-Romi word for boy (Chaverie).

    It was interesting to read how the Gypsies were subject to measures that presaged the holocaust- in countries other the Germany- even AFTER the holocaust.  For example, the Swiss practiced forced adoption for gypsy children into the 1970s!

    The Gypsies are interesting because of the incredible strength and durability of their culture despite literally thousands of years of persecution as well as the lack of a written language.  The continued existence of gypsies seems to demonstrate that a common culture can survive all obstacles.