You don’t.

So there’s more to it than your oversimplified view is painting onto this discussion. If you meant to say that there is a lot of stupid music made by people who would like little more than to incite acts of violence through said stupid music, I guess I would get it, but I wonder ultimately how far off you are to blaming Judas Priest for some lost teen putting a shotgun to his head because “the music told me to”?

There is – thank god – more than one way to skin a cat.

As for our evolutionary “comfort zone,” within that parameter is all sorts of dubious behavior like bashing women over the head and dragging them back to our caves, but we don’t do much of that anymore. If living communally was so imperative for our survival, wouldn’t we be doing more of it instead of fantasizing about it? Didn’t the 60s teach us that communal living was a flop, and that it could only sustain itself more or less for the short term?

Thanks for the comments. It’s always good to get a dialog going to provoke our thinking.

That said, I want to clarify a few points.

First, anger has a place in art and music, of course. But, it seems to me that there is a lot of it these days and often it strikes me as mere sensationalism, designed to hype people up. A comparison might be made to the hate radio talk shows and the tabloid journalism we see so prevalent these days. It operates on the psychology of people–anger is a simple cheap emotion you can exploit. An example would be a lot of the rap stuff you hear. But in a more general sense I’m talking about where our emotions go when listening to music and I have to say, the reaction I have to a lot of the rock & heavy metal ouvre is that I feel hyped up, ready to fight, if you know what I mean, and I find this a cheap attractant. Why not focus on art that appeals to our nurturing side? Not the cheaply sentimental (lots of country music) or stuff that gets our blood lust up, or even just lust for that matter, and focus on music and art that has nuance and depth.

Let me be a bit more specific about what I mean about community. As one of you pointed out it can mean a lot of things. I guess I would say I mean community with a small “c”, that is, a localized, readily available group that is associated with “place” rather than, say, the community of folk musicians, which could be worldwide.

The reason this is important is for the same reason we need to shop locally and buy food at farmers markets, and center our lives in a place that is real to us, has real live people we meet face to face and deal with every day.

A point I tried to make is that we are essentially tribal and communal in nature–that is our evolutionary comfort zone. It is detrimental to our very survival to suppose that we can be self-sufficient and independent to the degree that we Americans believe. It’s a myth. Yet, our economic system and virtually everything our culture tells us is that we can operate in this way. As an example, Americans move, on average, once every five years. Basically “place” is unimportant and individual desire supreme (economic necessity plays a role as well). But the end result is that we lose the knowledge and intimacy with a landscape, with tradition, with a group of people that care about us, and the longterm investment in a community, whether it be a neighborhood or town. I’m convinced, as well, that we do better in life when there is stability, just as children, dogs and cats, or any being. Instability, to my mind, causes stress. But, hey, it’s a relative thing where balance is the key.

The bottom line is that individual “freedom” these days is very much at the expense of responsibility to others; responsibility to the larger community.

I have an entire community living in my apartment on some weekends.

And I’m pretty sure we aren’t talking about Britney Spears fan club, though to be certain, we could just as well. This sounds more like a communal residential model of sorts. Me, I am probably your worst nightmare when it comes to how deeply I have disconnected both with nature and with community. I am intensely unplugged from those around me. Better still, when I spend too much around other people I begin to feel almost nauseous. How’s that for scary? The whole idea of a human community working together to better the group is fairly bizarre and insect like to me.

There. That ought to seal my coffin for a while more.

Thanks again for posting.

Two years ago, Tricia and I traveled for a Summer month all over practically every inch of Oregon. We have six very good friends there and that number is soon to be up to nine. So we will undoubtedly find ourselves back in that fine State. Reading this reminded me of everything I loved about that Summer of travel.

I’ve always been a city boy – New York, Houston and now Chicago. So that means I’ve always held a little fantasy about moving to a farm with some chickens, goats and a corn patch or something. But my wife grew up in the country and she’ll have none of that.

She’s got a point – and there’s a hell of a lot of truth to the John Prine song. But anonymity only goes so far in the city too. Where I live, we call the word of mouth news “the Bridgeport News.” And it is delivered faster than CNN on meth.

It wasn’t until the 20^th century and the introduction of film and sound recording, along with the cheap availability of paper (not to mention a mass populace graced with spare change & time) that we see the emergence of the artist as celebrity and “star” and the amassing of fame and fortune by those thus anointed.

That’s not exactly true – Mark Twain, for instance, was a true star in his day. But to some degree I’m with your friend’s writing…except that at this point in the game, technology has led to introspection on a much greater level. Everybody’s a star. Everybody gets fifteen minutes and the idea of the star (arena rock style) is degrading. I think in a good way.

I don’t whole heartedly buy the localism angle though. Not in America, where we have no local culture to speak of. But I do essentially agree. You have to make you and space around you worthwhile before you can worry about anywhere else. And friends around a table playing music? Hell f*ing yeah.

Alright Ms. Unspeakable – you can pass your friend my email address. If he wants he can get in touch. Might be through his neck of the woods and we might have to do a little picking.

Here’s Merriam Websters def.

So it’s not a word everyone uses the same way.

The members of the Britney Spears fan club might qualify as a community under some definition, but I don’t think thats what we’re talking about right? or is it?

“So how many monkeys would you have to own before you couldn’t remember their names? At what point, in your mind, do your beloved pets become just a faceless sea of monkey? Even though each one is every bit the monkey Slappy was, there’s a certain point where you will no longer really care if one of them dies.”

There will be groups within communities that have more in common than others. Suggesting that not being too sad about a community member dying as being the definition of that community’s right to have common interests and goals and so be called a community… is not taking into consideration the human element. The studies and reasoning above are based on primates and grooming, and not the complicated relationships of man. More than 2300 people can be part of a community. Will everyone react to the loss of a certain member the same? Will everyone react to changes in the community the same? No. Are we not a world community? Or are we the world? Are we the children? Are we the ones to make a brighter day?

I think that Neurosis considers the Ozzfest audience to be a part of their community. What else could they be considered, when they have shown up to support their music? I can only guess what the audience takes home from a show of that size, and I can honestly only guess what Neurosis takes home from performing for that type of crowd. Aside from the example of them playing a stadium show, the band has been active in their hometown community since inception. They put a lot into their local arts scene. They have their own label and support artists within their community on the label. I used that video of them, because I think it was one of the videos available that showed them as the artists they are, and the sound and camera work didn’t suck.

I do like your question, and I wonder how small does a community have to be?

And I think you may not have wanted to imply that nihilistic and angry music always went hand in hand, right? music can be one without the other?

Unspeakable, do you think Neurosis considers the Ozzfest audience to be their community? I’ve never been to ozzfest, so i dont really know. But from what i remember from stadium shows they didnt really gave me too much of a community feeling, not anymore than say an airport might (but then again, last stadium show i went to must have been at least 10 years ago).