>H ART: Mental-enhancing music

[Kathryn Aegis <aegis@igc.apc.org>]

Transhuman Mailing List

I have been thinking about recent postings relating to music--which music
enhances mental processes, which music might be considered 'extropian',
technical processes for predicting what sort of music an individual might
want...and I agree that any listing of 'extropian' music would have to
include the tastes of many individuals.  I myself would have to nominate
punk and post-punk for inclusion, that explosion of intelligent rage that
burst across the Atlantic to find homes in squalid little clubs in various
cities.  ('squalid' meaning you had to carry a baseball bat to go downstairs
to the bathroom...)  If you avoided the skinheads, you could find a
collection of hypersmart freaks who found little value in the limitations of
mainstream culture, who valued 'interesting' over 'pretty'.  The aethestic
survives today in industrial, grunge, hardcore techno, cyberpunk literature
and the Doc Martens in Nieman Marcus. 

If someone were actually writing a program to produce the 'perfect' music, I
would have to tell that person:  don't give me what I want, don't play the
notes I expect to hear--give me something to blow away the flabbier neurons,
knife-edged to cut away complacency, trash my assumptions and leave me
floundering in the deep end of the pool....

Sin,

Kathryn Aegis

********************************************************************
'Don't try to help me, I can save myself...If I'm incomplete, don't fill the
gaps....Save me from the people who would save me from my sin, they've got
muscle for brains!'  Andy Gill, Gang of Four, _Songs of the Free_
********************************************************************


***************************************************************************
* If you need to unsubscribe, send email saying "unsubscribe transhuman"  *
* to majordomo@logrus.org, without the quotes, from the SAME email address*
* as the one you subscribed under! Yes, it is case-sensitive. Don't blame *
* the admin for your spelling errors.                                     *
*                  Please email all technical problems to                 *
*               owner-transhuman@logrus.org, NOT to the list.             *
***************************************************************************