I had the wonderful experience of hearing the BBC Philharmonic perform Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at the Bridgewater Hall on Saturday, 12th April. Goodness gracious, what a piece: stuttering into life with an uncanny heartbeat motif; blazing a path through lively dances; burning with resistance against the omnipresence of death; and finally facing its own finitude—finding,Continue reading “(Momentarily) quieting the endless deferrals – closure vs an infinite horizon in Mahler 9”
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Blocked-unblocked
Pushing through writers’ block requires an excruciating attention to each individual word. There is delight in making rapid progress through a writing project, an intense enjoyment of the way in which the words pour out of your hands before you have even had an opportunity to internalise them as your own words. In a fluentContinue reading “Blocked-unblocked”
The Return of US Fascism: How does a coward stand up to such times?
How naïve have I been? I remember 2016. I was one of many short-sighted liberals who whole-heartedly believed that there was no way on god’s green earth that Donald Trump could be elected. I remember waking up on the morning after the US went to the polls, to discover that I had been wrong. IContinue reading “The Return of US Fascism: How does a coward stand up to such times?”
Feeding the Empty Piano: dialectics of machine and human in Osborn’s “Schiller’s Piano”
Laurence Osborn’s new piano concerto, “Schiller’s Piano”, which I had the immense pleasure of hearing in its premiere performance by Zubin Kanga and the Manchester Collective on Thursday 10th October, gives a shocking musical account of the construction of a replica piano in a Nazi concentration camp. The true story which informs the piece relatesContinue reading “Feeding the Empty Piano: dialectics of machine and human in Osborn’s “Schiller’s Piano””
An image of one’s own: whose reality is it anyway?
Some loose thoughts on Satoshi Kon’s 1997 film “Perfect Blue” The Following post contains spoilers for the film Perfect Blue. TW: Violence, Sexual Assault Satoshi Kon’s 1997 feature-film directorial debut, Perfect Blue, tells the story of Mima, a pop-star who leaves her musical career behind in order to pursue a life as an actor. SheContinue reading “An image of one’s own: whose reality is it anyway?”
Some thoughts on Organs without Bodies, media depictions of sexual relationships and the composition of music
Recently I have written a piece of orchestral music, entitled “Organs without Bodies”. The idea of Organs without Bodies, from the Žižek book of the same name, involves highlighting the impasse between the Organs and the Bodies as the site of production. Whereas a totalising ideological system smooths over the impasses of intractable difference, a dialectical approach (which exposesContinue reading “Some thoughts on Organs without Bodies, media depictions of sexual relationships and the composition of music”
Barbie and the Barycentric Real
The orbiting fantasies of Barbieland, Barbie’s “real world” and the audience’s “real world” A still image from Barbie (Gerwig, 2023) Contains spoilers for the films Barbie and the Truman Show In the recent film, Barbie (Gerwig, 2023), action takes place in two separate worlds: Barbieland and “the real world”. Barbieland is the fictive world inContinue reading “Barbie and the Barycentric Real”
Re-composing the past
An exploration of retroactivity in music through Lacanian and Žižekian theory I, the composer, wish to project into the future. I sit at the manuscript paper and I ask myself, “How will my piece end?” The inevitability of the ending is something we may take for granted. Ultimately, there will be an ending: a fixedContinue reading “Re-composing the past”
Self-consciousness reaches its tautology
Annotations from ¶ 167 of Hegel PdG x = knowledge of self y = knowledge of other (x–>y)–>y qua x Knowledge of other, which has been an integral part of the dialectical motion of knowledge up until now, is absorbed into knowledge of self. This is the outcome of knowledge’s self-consciousness: all that is knownContinue reading “Self-consciousness reaches its tautology”
Some notes on the origins of dialectical self-consciousness
Annotations from ¶ 166 of Hegel’s PdG First we deal with the dialectic, and then self-consciousness. It must begin with x. x is a simple place-holder, entirely empty, yet full of the potential for meaning. x is the first instance, it is the pre-dialectical place-holder. It is the moment of naïve clarity, to which manyContinue reading “Some notes on the origins of dialectical self-consciousness”
James Waide 