Exactly: music is not just ‘enjoyment,’ the English word doesn’t capture nearly the force we need to express. We’re talking not just about the movement of expression (ordinary feelings,) but the expression within expression (pure transport, Dionysian ecstasy,) the pure or “spiritual” movements which comprise the essence of music…

The motion proper to music is poetry, a ‘falling’ or ‘rising towards’ another ontological dimension entirely, the opening of a truly new universe within the structured space of a melodic flow. And this brings us to the properly ontological question — your first, about structure — and the real question, as always for ontology, is whether we’re “rising up” towards the first principles, the essences or forms in themselves, or whether we’re “descending down” towards things, fluxes, presence and absence, complexity, difference…

I think the real point is that there’s no radical division between these two movements: we don’t ever know if we’re close to “first” principles. There are no first principles — unless we consider “difference” itself to be a principle, which means we need an entirely new ontology. In fact “ontology” is already the wrong word, because it’s not about being, etc… So I don’t like “starting” within ontology, I like to work from the outside in — to extrude from within it things which echo or stutter or fluctuate, rare and curious essences, glimpses of alterity. All this is swarming within classical metaphysics.

The critical challenge is to produce new concepts — and I wonder if by analogy, if there are two orientations in ethics, if there aren’t two completely different ways of learning and playing music, indeed, “two” musics, or even a specific difference written into the essence of music itself — loudest in silence, present at its most absent, etc. In some important sense, music is surreality itself, an infinite virtuality, a canvas for synaesthetes…

Thank you again for your illuminating questions!

Joe

ethics is like music in that there are (roughly) two basic orientations towards ‘law’ or ’structure.’

what are these two orientations? what do you mean by ’structure’ here?

music is essentially joy, a “pure” mode of expression

can you say more about this part? i’m not sure i would agree with it on the face of its meaning – if ‘joy’ is an emotion of joy, pleasure, a simple ‘i like’ than music certainly does produce such effects, but only a certain kind of music and not music in general. again, why is ‘pure’ in quotation marks and what does “pure” mode of expression means here in relation to your discussion of music?

I hope this clarifies the difficulty somewhat; again, thank you for illuminating this obscurity! Also, I feel I should mention this is more like a “work in progress” and not a completely “tight” theoretical document (like “Beyond Desire” or the piece on holography and information.)

Joe

Modulated by a more primary force than itself, a difference at the heart of identity — already “conceptual” or contrapuntal, as well as non-conceptual and “atonal”?

why quotation marls around “conceptual” and “atonal”? why “conceptual OR contrapuntal? are you comparing conceptuality and counterpoint? what’s the analogy? so “a difference at the heart of identity” is conceptual – that’s sort of an obvious point, isn’t it? – or contrapuntal – so you’re saying conceptuality is a sort of counterpoint that combines multiple lines of thought? so second part: “as well as non-conceptual and ‘atonal’ – thus ‘a difference at the heart of identity’ is both conceptual and non-conceptual, but – and here’s my problem with your music analogy – contrapuntal and atonal or contrapuntal and “atonal”? counterpoint is somewhat of a science when it comes to harmony and tonality; ‘atonality’ on the other hand usually refers to a different area of music theory as far as i can tell – you can contrast ‘tonal’ and ‘atonal’ as a sort of ’system’ and ‘rejection of that system/chaos/aleatory sound’ – anyway, i thought whatever you were trying to communicate in that sentence got completely lost for me…

Pure musical transformation precedes and makes possible the linearized inscription of musical notes onto paper.

again, not sure what this means – “linearized inscription of musical notes” – musical notation, especially since the times of polyphony/counterpoint is not linear at all, in fact, the majority of music as we know it is mutlidimensional if you take either a traditionally tonal or atonal kind. To imagine musical notation as an example of uni-directionality and linearity is, it seems to me, a rather strange move. And what is “pure musical transformation”? What is being transformed? Why “pure”?

maybe i’m just reading too much into your observations and it is all easily resolved with a pair of clarifications…