Welcome aboard the 7th edition of Laughing Stock. This week Rich Walker delves into the darkest resesses of music to see if a nihilistic approach to music choices can actually help uplift the spirits in periods of desolation
The times they are a-trying. The majority of people across the globe have had their lives put on hold for over a year now; countless people have lost their lives due to incompetence of the people in charge, putting capitalism and the economy before human life; there is a government in the UK who appear to be unanswerable to any kind of transgression committed, and who have stopped even trying to pretend they give a fuck about anyone but themselves and their cronies; there’s an all but invisible opposition who fail to hold said government to account at every turn, creating an apathetic air of ‘if they’re not doing it why is anyone else going to bother?’. Young people, as ever, are bearing the brunt of the post crisis-crises, something that may only get worse for them if ‘vaccine passports’ are rolled out, denying them entry to cultural and social events through no fault of their own other than being last in the queue for a vaccine which they a) really want and b) have stayed inside for the best part of a year to protect the older people who could now benefit from being allowed out through virtue of age. The list could go on and on, the world (and the UK in particular) a seemingly never ending spiral of political, economic and social shit show after shit show. In this time it would be easy to turn to comedy over drama or documentary (or certainly over news coverage) to perk up, or to bright pop music to lighten the load. However, what if what actually helped in times of abject despair was turning toward darker content, towards music that could be described as ‘destructive’ or ‘dark’? What if a nihilistic approach to pulling oneself through the murk was more positive than listening to Dancing Queen?
There are many forms of nihilism, so for the purpose of this the focus will be on a commonly understood branch, existential nihilism, that, in a nutshell, life has no intrinsic meaning or value. Leading a nihilistic way of life is destructive, as Nietzsche posed in Will to Power, ‘nihilism is not…only the belief that everything deserves to perish, but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plough; one destroys’. Heidegger observed in The Question of Being that nihilism, in various and hidden forms, was already ‘the normal state of man’, that it is of our nature in many ways. Yet Michael Novak, in The Experience of Nothingness focussed on the positive implications of nihilism and nothingness, those which could lead to such as states liberty, freedom, and to creative possibilities, and Nietzsche believed that if we could eventually work through nihilism (possibly at a terrible price), surviving the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind. It is in this where the notion of turning to music and art made out of a nihilistic place actually starts to make sense; if it is in our nature to possess a degree of nihilism inside us, if a position of believing in nothingness can lead to a heightened sense of liberty from the mess of the world, if the world is going to hell in a handcart, when why not stick The Downward Spiral on and join the party?
Nihilism has always been prevalent across culture and in artistry. From the finest of ancient art to the most modern of music, artists have always used despair, decay and destruction as ways to create (see Harry Nilsson destroying his 3.5 octave vocal cord range whilst recording Pussy Cats with John Lennon, too in the zone/afraid/fucked up to stop the session, it all but ended his career), and to communicate with their audience. This is because they know one thing for sure: nihilism is a great way to connect to others. This is no recommendation of seeking out a nihilistic way of life, more to say that listening to how others have channelled that innate sense of destructiveness we all have inside of us, to question what this is and if any of it means anything, can help us understand not only the world we live in, but who we are too. The paradox being that connecting to nihilism can help us understand what is happening to us (unless that understanding is that it is meaningless, thus destroying the notion of meaning, coming a very full nihilistic circle…) . A very common nihilistic tendency in these terms is to seek out sad music when feeling sad. It does not seem counterintuitive to listen to a song such as Spiritualized’s ‘Broken Heart’ in the aftermath of a break up, it seems intrinsically right. Hearing Jason Pierce at his lowest, singing ‘and I’m crying all the time/ I’ll have to keep it covered up with a smile/ And I’ll keep on moving on for a while/ Lord I have a broken heart’ tells you that someone else feels this way, and by seeking out validation for your current woes, it actually helps knowing that someone else has been through this. Out of the darkness comes light.
Caravaggio was an expert in this. He was at the forefront of tenebrism, an extreme form of chiaroscuro painting (as much as nihilism is an extreme form of philosophical thinking) where strong lighting comes from no visible source. The darkness in the painting is of equal, if not higher, importance than the light, it anchors the images, without it there can be no illumination to provide the viewer with meaning. It is extraordinary and dramatic, forcing the audience to search around in the dark as much as scan the light. Artists such as The Haxan Cloak, Divide & Dissolve, The Body and Ben Frost are all masters of this art in music form. Listening to The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation is not a choice made lightly, but by being consumed by its darkness one can find a clarity of thought, an almost transcendence as the bass and the drone and the noise take over the space in the brain that is cluttered, and helps find a way to rise above the noise and in doing so find some light. There is peace in the noise, in the destruction of the thoughts, that instead of pushing you into the darkness you have chosen to listen to, can actually help open up something calm, something meditative. Live, the experience can be even more dramatic, as well as hearing the darkness, you can feel it too, almost literally being consumed by the music and lighting, and in the aftermath there can be a feeling of baptism, of being born anew out of the depth of the noise, the light at the end of the tunnel. Choosing a nihilistic listening experience perversely can light up your mood.
Mount Eerie’s unrelentingly sadA Crow Looked At Me is possibly one of the best examples of a nihilistic listening choice that exists in music today. Borne out of the death of his wife Geneviève Castree at just 36 from pancreatic cancer, only one year after the birth of their daughter, Phil Elverum wrote A Crow… to help him externalise the unfathomable grief that he was feeling in the aftermath. It begins with the stark lines
Death is real
Someone’s there and then they’re not
It’s not for singing about
It’s not for making into art
When real death enters the house
All poetry is dumb
and from there on in does not let up in it’s raw descriptions of how fucking sad and hard a sudden, young death can be for the people left behind. And yet, choosing to listen to it, crying to it (you will cry), is cleansing. We do not talk about death enough, despite its unshakeable prevalence in life, and albums like A Crow…regardless of how much of an odd choice it might seem to listen along to someone’s hushed, intimate thoughts about the death of their partner, can be a helpful, comforting, essential form of nihilism. It’s not a trip that necessarily needs to be taken regularly though. The Antlers’ devastating masterpiece Hospice is the same; one or two forays into that pitch dark narrative a year is enough, yet it’s difficult not to come out of it in a state of catharsis, with Peter Silberman’s refrain from ‘Wake’ of ‘don’t ever let anyone tell you you deserve that’ reverberating through your mind.
Sometimes though, taking the ‘destruction is good’ route might be a little too much in these trying times, and perhaps ABBA is actually the answer. Although for some, ‘Take A Chance On Me’ might be their own personal nihilistic Waterloo. We all have our thresholds.
Each week we will share some tracks that the contributers to Laughing Stock currently have on heavy rotation. You can follow the rolling playlist on Apple or Spotify.
ICYMI: More from Laughing Stock
Edition 6 - @connahr on producers of imagination
Edition 5 - @samhartford on Spotify’s all seeing eye
Edition 4 - @dickiewalker on how amazing organ music is
Edtion 3 - @williampalmer on Music as Muscle Memory
Edition 2 - @connahr on Arctic Monkeys and Quantitative Easing
Edition 1 - @dickiewalker on Dua Lipa and the new pop vanguard
If you are interested in contributing to future editions of Laughing Stock, please DM either @dickiewalker or @connahr