Journeys in sound

The travels continue. Over recent days I have been travelling back to sounds from the 70s that were part of my growing up. Patti Smith’s ‘Horses’ album reminds me of that whole New York scene around her group, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Then there was the whole American scene of Pere Ubu, Devo, Chrome and The Residents. These last four are groups I haven’t heard in probably 20 years, but would really like to revisit.

Yesterday I travelled to Leeds and back by train. But couldn’t bring myself to play music en route. Instead I steadily recharged the batteries. I did read a really interesting article though. It was in an old issue of Harvest Journal (from 1988/89, a journal on Jungian Studies). The article was called ‘Listening to the Shadows: Towards an Archetypal View of Music’ and was written by David Wilde. It’s a really interesting read. He compares the careers and obsessions of Carl Jung with those of Bela Bartok. This had a particular interest for me because I love the music of Bartok. The article explored the development of music from tonal to atonal, through dissonance to unstable. There was a particular focus on the development of the Shadow in music, and an appreciation that dissonance and atonality are not the opposite of harmony and tonality – rather, they complement it. In the same way, the Shadow is not the opposite of the personality traits that we project, rather it complements them. This is important. The Shadow is seen as offering a constant source of threat, but also a constant source of energy.

Over the last few days we have bought a decent digital camera. Now, how do you put photos on a weblog???