Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’

This premise of this article is that music and the writing process have no inherent kinship, and that the often ill-conceived merger of these activities as the “music writing” process, is generally destined for failure. That is because writing about music subsumes its affective power into a foreign...

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Main Author: John Scannell
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: UTS ePRESS 2011-09-01
Series:PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/view/1716
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author John Scannell
author_facet John Scannell
author_sort John Scannell
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description This premise of this article is that music and the writing process have no inherent kinship, and that the often ill-conceived merger of these activities as the “music writing” process, is generally destined for failure. That is because writing about music subsumes its affective power into a foreign modality; it is captured and rendered into the printed word, made to signify, made to represent something, where that something is generally resolved within the presuppositions of the writers’ often-limited referential framework. At the heart of the matter is that writing about music often does not attempt to capture the affective processes that inspired creation in the first place, and in this respect, the paper argues that it may be more appropriate for the music writer/journalist to respond in kind, or as Deleuze and Guattari might say, that the music writing process should pursue a ‘becoming-music’ itself. For rather than subjecting music to the realm of representation, or subsuming its creative power within the realm of opinion and cliché, the writer should instead be concerned with harnessing and re-channelling those forces of sensation or affect that gave rise to it in the first place, and which might, in turn, inspire a literary creativity that is commensurate to the power of the music at hand.
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spelling doaj.art-6a0720a124704d07930881813a469db32022-12-21T22:57:54ZengUTS ePRESSPORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies1449-24902011-09-0181Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’John ScannellThis premise of this article is that music and the writing process have no inherent kinship, and that the often ill-conceived merger of these activities as the “music writing” process, is generally destined for failure. That is because writing about music subsumes its affective power into a foreign modality; it is captured and rendered into the printed word, made to signify, made to represent something, where that something is generally resolved within the presuppositions of the writers’ often-limited referential framework. At the heart of the matter is that writing about music often does not attempt to capture the affective processes that inspired creation in the first place, and in this respect, the paper argues that it may be more appropriate for the music writer/journalist to respond in kind, or as Deleuze and Guattari might say, that the music writing process should pursue a ‘becoming-music’ itself. For rather than subjecting music to the realm of representation, or subsuming its creative power within the realm of opinion and cliché, the writer should instead be concerned with harnessing and re-channelling those forces of sensation or affect that gave rise to it in the first place, and which might, in turn, inspire a literary creativity that is commensurate to the power of the music at hand.http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/view/1716Affect, Popular Music, Journalism, Writing, Deleuze and Guattari
spellingShingle John Scannell
Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’
PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies
Affect, Popular Music, Journalism, Writing, Deleuze and Guattari
title Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’
title_full Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’
title_fullStr Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’
title_full_unstemmed Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’
title_short Working to Design: The Self-Perpetuating Ideology of Rock or ... ‘The New Bob Dylan’
title_sort working to design the self perpetuating ideology of rock or the new bob dylan
topic Affect, Popular Music, Journalism, Writing, Deleuze and Guattari
url http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/view/1716
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