In the Driver's Seat

Matt and Crushtor discuss General Semantics
Matt: So if I'm not Matt, then who am I?
Crushtor: The essence of this sort of system is to stop semantic blockages. Things aren't what people say they are. If you say "this is shit" then the word becomes a substitute for the object. But a word is a sound to describe the object. It isn't the object itself.
Matt: So what you're saying is, that a word just refers to something, it's not the thing itself.
Crushtor: Exactly. Do you introduce yourself as Matt? You're not a word. You're a person. Your name is Matt, you are not Matt.
Matt: I'm not Matt. My name is Matt!
C: Now we're getting it.

I also used Hayakawa's "What is Red" example at this point, and he almost followed it all as if Hayakawa was writing it down as we spoke. Remind me to stop drinking so much coffee. And stop procrastinating so much. It's taken me ages to even start my Enslaved interview today...

Feckless, Witless and Chocolatey

Since my alma mater Harm.us (I remember writing for them in Year 11 of High School with a B average in English) is all but disintegrating from the inside out (it no longer works with the newer version of Firefox - in my view it's a write off.) I'll write my article on the watershed year for metal - 1994 - and how Kurt Cobain's legacy actually served to rejuvenate the metal scene despite the new wave of Alternative/grunge virtually decimating interest in the ailing genre just two years prior. I'll chronicle my progress right here at Crushtor.net in installments. I'll also be trying to contact the key players scene at the time as well as other journalists for their opinions, all the while shopping it around to various magazines to see if they'll hop on board my self-indulgent nostalgia trip and print out tickets for it (er...print it.)

The focus of the piece will center on six key albums that not only rode out to new frontiers but smashed old boundaries, breathing life into a moribund, directionless genre.

The names of the albums are:

Threshold - Psychedelicatessen
Cynic - Focus
Dream Theater - Awake
Edge of Sanity - Purgatory Afterglow
Tiamat - Wildhoney
Opeth - Orchid

As well as three albums on the cusp of this crucial period:

Paradise Lost - Icon (1993)
My Dying Bride - The Angel and the Dark River (1995)
Anathema - Eternity (1996)

See if you can guess the common elements they share! (Hint: they all broke the unwritten oaths of flirting with the "enemies...")

Thanks go to Jan for giving me the Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" for my birthday, as well as Rae and Kris for "The Harvest" (a collection of literary Australian fiction) and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", Nat and Ash for the gift card. And thanks for all that braved the weather to attend the shindig too. Special mention goes to Shai for making a compendium of Achewood quotes in his inimitable literate and lyrical style. What's better than the awesomest thing in the world? An easily accessible Wiki in order to quote from it, of course! The man's an absolute genius - the extensional definition of a polymath if I ever saw one.

By the way; does anyone have a video camera that I could borrow?

Guardians and Monsters

Thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday today (especially Elyse, who deserves special mention for sending me international well-wishes.) I'm sitting like a Buddha as I write, stomach distended from too much food (I ate like it was my last meal today. Maccas breakfast, meat and potato lunch, lasagne dinner...I felt my body decaying too much to refuse the salad put in front of me) ... bring on the party this Saturday.

I am also absolutely sick to death of the promotion for Australia at the moment. I know what I'm technically doing is giving them more free marketing, but if there was ever an extensional definition for overkill, this campaign would be it.

Superfreaky

A conversation between Crushtor and Mr. Shai
C: I disproved Aristotlean logic yesterday.
S: Oh yeah, how?
C: On Facebook, of all things. I told someone that "maybe ain't no yes."
S: (pause) That's brilliant.

If Shai thinks its good, it must have merit. He got me on to Achewood, after all.

Apart from a mind forced to tread water in a sea of novocaine every time I set foot into work and a declining love life (moribund is still better than dead) everything should seem much better than it feels.

Premature Enrapturation

Three songs in and Gojira's new record has exuded more mastery of the metal craft than nearly every other 2008 metal release put together. Absolute brilliance. (And they're French?)

Also, my interview with Jens from Edguy went down a treat - Aussie could be hosting their Lavatory Love Rocket Rides once again early next year...

Redefining Funny

Apart from academic woes (5,000w by Wednesday with 200 down? Nice try.) and general lethargy (some alcohol related, other chocolate fudge covered pancakes related) I've had to redefine funny in the face of the incisively astute and utterly hilarious Achewood. I've never seen consistent web-based genius at this mind-bogglingly hysterical magnitude. Roast Beef has to be the greatest character ever created, ever.

Grant Us Grace

You know when you've taken something for granted when it's gone. When the flash of thought that signals you to reach for it has to be quelled in remembrance to that which you had. It seems so effortless, obvious when it's there but then it feels all askance when it's not. I upset a friend yesterday, one of the dearest ones I've ever had the privilege to know. Whether my intentions were merely an oversight or not has not changed the result - I've been shunned and condemned regardless.

Over 10 years of friendship buried by a flight of irrationality and an exchange of spite-filled words. Whether I deserve the treatment or not blurs my vision - being accused of being a bad friend when I've done nothing but support her through thick, thin and the gamut in-between hurts to say the least. Whether a nucleus of truth in what she tells me, what she informs me of what I've done (or not) looks to be present or not may indeed be the flash point for a once iron-clad friendship to unravel and burn. I can't help but think that my friend is crying for help, yet pushing me away at the same time. It's so very, very hard to tell. It's hard to live with. I can't beg for forgiveness forever.

The Storm of Progress(ive)

"Grim-faced and forbidding
Their faces closed tight
An angular mass of New Yorkers
Pacing in rhythm
Race the oncoming night
They chase through the streets of Manhattan
Head-first humanity
Pause at a light
Then flow through the streets of the city"
- Rush - The Camera Eye

Rush and other progressive rock/metal bands espouse the wondrous textures and timbres of eclectic rhythms and melodies, crafting their instrumental mastery for eyes to gape and have ears struck down in disbelief - but what about lyrics? Often overlooked as peripheral or perfunctory, evocative lyricism in progressive metal has undergone a decline since the heady and erudite days of Rush, the early Dream Theater, Pink Floyd and others. However, despite some band's classification by others residing outside the progressive realm, could poetic lyrics substitute for poetic showmanship and composition? Case and point, Dark Tranquillity in Hedon:

"Enter Suicidal Angels;
How hungry we've become;
like animals naked in shame
Fed with the hooves of apocalypse
that galloped down, disordered worlds behind

From word to a word I was led to a word
that spanned over cultures in rage
Crimson masses, sleeped in decadence
holding our tongues to the thirsty sun
So, it the future still open?
Then enter, hornet, from our hive-dark hearts
to draw down the end from within"

The image of nihilistic angels swooping from the heavens to desecrate the human spirit is like Zamyatin's "dynamite that explodes eternally" - it just immerses you in dread and inevitability. The gothic music just heightens an already existent atmosphere. Katatonia in their "so simple it's brilliant" aesthetic of pure lyrical brilliance is exemplified in the following passage which requires no music to move and inspire.

"Old light and new colors
Your picture hangs in the night
Is this the right time to set one free and go away
In the emptiness behind you I will walk about
Surely you'll miss me, but long live the doubt

What will replace us?
What will be our memory of this time?
Second hand impressions
Hand them over so we can let it die

I remember one time when we were abroad
I was laughing at a book I had bought
But you were standing against the hotel wall
Frozen in an unknown thought"
- Katatonia - Burn the Remembrance

Beautiful.

General Semantics: Relationships and Politics - Over and Under Definition

While thinking about my past and my intellectual preferences as to how to approach it, my mind took flight on a question that I find many others approach with caution, disdain and confusion - in the realm of human relationships and whether the terms we use to describe them are problematic, thereby contributing to their collapse and almost routine failure. As Korzybski provides in his Science and Sanity, I believe that the term "boyfriend/girlfriend" or "husband/wife" or even "partner" which is used as an abstraction for same-sex relationships are over/underdefined, and as such carry with them the burden of disappointment and unfair expectation.

Over/underdefinition runs rife in politics and media. An example of over/underdefinition in a political context can be found in the word "democracy" - while the intensional definition of "democracy" could be applied to an extensional dictatorship such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (functionally, the DPRK exists as a multi-party democracy, although no power is ever delegated to anyone else except for the "Dear Leader") it becomes apparent that the word, democracy, has been overdefined to fit a political agenda and not the facts as we confront them.

As the Wiktionary states as an intensional definition, the term "girlfriend" means the "female partner in a romantic relationship" - but when we declare to ourselves or even others (setting our Facebook status to reflect the territory to the dreaded 'In a Relationship' status) are we displaying a definition rather an an extensional fact? If your boyfriend cheats on you, claiming the relationship dissolved in his mind's eye, does the intensional term still fit the extensional territory? (By that definition, if you thought him to still be your boyfriend, but did not extend the same courtesy as you being his girlfriend, does the relationship still exist?) If one partner intensionally defines a relationship as something akin to a "booty call" or some such vulgar term while the other expects total fidelity of word and deed, who is "in the relationship"? In this example, does it appear that either of these two are in a relationship, by extensional definition? Why do so many over/underdefine the term to satisfy a tendency to decieve oneself for the sake of an equally over/underdefined term "love" or "companionship?"

Simply put, some relationships simply dissolve from a mismatch in expectation - the maps for the relationship simply do not fit the territory and neither party shall give the other the benefit of the doubt to explore one another's map to evaluate fully as to what map will be followed and how to apply this to the territory that confronts them day-by-day. It feels like a struggle to be surmounted - however one can find the vividness in life's grand palette by drawing more detailed maps and becoming more extensionally oriented to avoid such conflicts arising from mere "definition."

References:
Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Institute of General Semantics, 1994, 5th edition.
The New Peoplemaking, Virginia Satir, Science and Behavior Books, 1988.