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The music in my life


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Hello everybody. I hope you're having a great day.

I'm a classical composer for a living. Not that sort of generic copy-paste new age spa music nonsense. I write avant-garde, academic music. The sort of thing an average listener would piss themselves listening to and then ask me when the music starts. As you might imagine, it's not the most conducive thing to have a special interest while interacting with what is possibly the most elitist and snobbish academic circle on the planet. 

I've been lurking on this forum for several months now, but today I have decided to put my foot forth to lead change. It's a pleasure to finally get to meet all of you. This is, in my experience, one of the most intelligent and articulate forums I've come across on the internet, and I'm happy to call here my new home. 

I believe that everyone has a dark side like I do. Everyone indulges in some kind of guilty pleasure, no matter how pure, perfect, intelligent, glamourous etc. they believe themselves to be. I believe that nobody should have to repress that, no matter how much an image of "refinedness" one wishes to project. 

Having felt some degrees of shame and self-hatred over my transgressive interest while interacting with these communities, it has always been my wish to find a community of people who respect each other for these dark sides. Who still love to be smart, and still love to enjoy themselves. And today, I'm proud to say that I believe I have found one.

There's a revolutionary German composer Helmut Lachenmann who composes exclusively with noise. If you haven't heard his music, I highly recommend it. But he often says that "composing is about putting things into relation." 

"But Mr Lachenmann, this is just noise! You can't call this music!"

"No more music? Wonderful! We can finally listen then."

What we call "noise" is simply a metaphor for "interference". When we think about violin playing, we think of a virtuoso singing beautiful melodies on their instrument after decades of practice to create a perfectly pure tone. We loathe the sounds of the bow scratching accidentally against the string. We hate when we can hear the soft humming of the player on the recording. We seek in our elitist practice to remove these sounds entirely. Because they are "noise". They are the wind disrupting the morse code that we assume to be the "message we're supposed to hear".

Just like fetishes and sex are seen as noise to the professionalism of us in this industry. Sex is taboo? What a joke. I know every single one of them indulges themselves just as I do, just as you do, just as everyone does. It is merely filtered, so we can hear a perfect performance. But to them, this is noise. I am noise. Anything that would taint their perfect image of themselves is noise. To be filtered. To be "practiced away". To be scorned and ignored.

But just as Lachenmann seeks to amplify these noises in his music, to make us reflect on our listening and what leads us to understand the music we hear in a certain way, I seek to amplify this noise in my life as well. I am not ashamed of who I am. The sounds of pee splashing down is the music in my life. 

I hope you take good care of me. Thank you all for existing and brightening my countless days and helping me feel not alone.

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Hello there! That's one of the more erudite introductions I've read 🙂. I hope and expect you'll be happy here. I guess you know your way around, so have fun contributing and interacting! 

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