Seizing the means of Perception

I just finished watching a documentary about rave, and rave culture. Pretty much of it was mediocre, and served only to trigger my nostalgia about the early nineties, but there bits of it that were very interesting. Mostly those bits containing Genesis P-Orridge. The film is called Better Living Through Circuitry, and you should be able to dig it up somewhere, download and watch.

One of the things GPO said, was that while the punk movement had been about seizing the means of production, techno was about the means of perception as well. It was a really good way of drawing out the essence of, atleast part of, the techno movement as I had known. It also got me thinking of something Pascal from Resistance D said in an interview (atleast my mind remembers it this way, but I could be wrong). He claimed that techno was about taking all those sounds you hear around you every day, such as the hum of the refrigerator, the cars, street lights and what have you, taking control of them and using them to cope with reality. Sampling enables someone to appropriate a part of reality one is usually a passive recipient of, and turn it into creativity. A truly reality altering practise.

When I read this, so many years ago back in 1993, in fact just before christmas, it really got me thinking. I had discovered techno not long before, and I didn't understand just why the crude electronic sounds and thudding beats made me feel alive in a way current pop music (including the pre-digested grunge and metal) could. But this statement was as good an explanation as any. I clearly felt frustrated by the way school and society wanted me to be passive and live my life the way they expected, and I often said that techno makes me feel good, because society wants me to be a machine. But in fact techno was making me feel like the opposite of a machine.

And this is what GPO is talking about. Music as a magickal means of controling your reality and environment. He is ofcourse not just inspired by deconstructionist thinking on this subject, but also by Aleister Crowley himself. GPO and TOPY/TOPI is all about magick, as we know, and seeing reality as in a flux. By altering the way you see reality and respond to reality you gain power over it on some level. In the film he also states that taking over various corporate logos and placing them in a different context "emasculates their power over you", and this statement could be carried over to anything mostly, as I see it.

The music industry is out to control you. Not in the brain washing way, but in the "buy our records, listen to them passively, buy more records" (or files as it's starting to be). The record industry doesn't like it when you start making your own shit and giving it away for free, because it takes away their power over you. The goverment is out to control you too, and they're more than happy to share that control with the record companies. The key element is that you remain passive, go to work, generate economic growth and consume. If people stop doing that reality would collapse. Reality meaning our current mode of capitalist, statist, collectivist, hive society. By grabbing the means of perception for your own pleasure, and sharing in with your friends you create a new reality, and one that suits you more than the one you are being fed.

Unfortunately most people are not very conscious when they create music. They see instruments as instruments, and tracks as tracks, and records as a product. The fail to see music as magick. And all music is magick, whether you are aware of it or not. Music, not just techno, but all music, is an emotional highway of subconscious communication. What you put out in your music, you put into someone (most of all yourself).

As I was into techno, and the whole DIY spirit that came with it, many years ago, I am now also painfully aware of how the superficial trade marks of that movement has become fashion and mass culture (passive). More than anything this so called new rave fashion has highlighted this change. It's quite strange to me, cos I see the smiley t-shirts, and I think "yeah, fucking acid house man" and these kids just wear them cos everyone else is wearing them. Getting old is painful. :)

But there's hope. What techno was about back then is now bigger than ever. People have the means of production so firmly in their hands, and the next step is for them to realize that they hold reality between their fingers. Don't just recieve, transmit! And it's actually happening, with blogs, mp3, p2p, vsti, podcasts, webradio, webtv and so forth and so forth. It's not just for people who get an erection from TB-303 bleeps anymore (or the hippies, punks and beatniks before them).

Get conscious, get powerfull. I guess that's the bottom line.