NEW WORLD RITUALS AUDIO ONLY

Chuvash, Chuvashia (Căvash Jen)

Deborah (the Remix)

Words from the Philosophy of Rapture by Catherine Clement
Original music on harmonium

The Goddess Necessity

Words from The Philosophy of Rapture by Catherine Clement
Original Music

Stimmung

stone drone

Words from the Philosophy of Rapture by Catherine Clement
Original music on harmonium

"Orgasm is therefor the foremost means of attaining the dissolution of attaining the dissolution of the individual subject who thereby becomes the Absolute I, the Immense Heart, or a Forbidden Word. This notion of favoring the moment of syncope is pushed to its extreme consequences; it is true that afterward nothing of value remains. Not sex, not death, incest, excrement, urine or even God: it's all the same, or rather its All One. For our purposes, we will retain the notion that syncope thus radicalized signified a transgression and a breakthrough... "At the end of sexual intercourse" says the Tantric philosopher in his treatise "there is a sound that occurs in the form of a spontaneous resonance springing forth involuntarily from the throat of the female beloved; this is an endless and indistinct sound that requires no meditation, no concentration. If one fixes ones thoughts on it, one can become master of the universe. An indistinct sound, far from that of song, and unending sound, the imaginary font of all engendering, of all germination. This cry is not only the woman's. Metamorphosed, it resounds in the space between the two sexes: it is the medium. No other word could better describe the cry of jouissance than this ambiguous word where the between the two of syncope is swallowed up: medium, between father and mother, heaven and earth, index and ring finger."

Jouissance

Text From Catherine Clement's Syncope; The Philosophy of Rapture
Original harmonium music

“Courtly love practices with two partners the asceticism of the hermit in the forest; instead of a severe and complicit God from whom one seeks tenderness and awaits revelation, there is the lady, the substitute for the divine, divine herself and perceived as such…

When she does not yield, and because she resists, the lady, in courtly love, teaches the young man the art of distance; she is an instructor. It is her job to tame the young man’s roughness, to domesticate his ardor; it is her job to teach him good manners…

The lady, instead of the master, the lady as mistress, we are not far from Indian love at first sight between the disciple and guru who has always been awaiting him.”

Courtly Love

Text From Catherine Clement's Syncope; The Philosophy of Rapture
Original harmonium music


“It is no longer possible to speak of “feminine” and “masculine”; one is transformed into the other and the body no longer has limits. This is so true that there is a point in the practice of Tantrism where the suspended orgasm may be achieved either with a woman of flesh and blood or with the idea of woman also very real: it can be practiced by “interiorizing” the image of a woman who is elsewhere or it can be realized in a void. Furthermore, in order to attain his goal, the Tantric practitioner may go to bed with his mother or his sister. Or he can fantasize about them when is alone, inside. Along with difference, other solid taboos also collapse, all human limitations fade away.”

All Human Limitations

Text From Catherine Clement's Syncope; The Philosophy of Rapture
Original harmonium music

TABULA RASA (SYNCOPES STRATEGIES)

In the eyes of societies that make a wholsale condemnation of depression, rapture, ecstasy and laziness, the creative act is part of a psychasthenia. Weakness, malediction, fragility, drugs and passing to the form the long cavalcade  of complaints that encompass the artist’s mythology; in the best cases, a circle of affectionate followers surrounds the artist, who is pushed a little further along the road toward syncope. Nevertheless, the artist is still the object of veneration; the fear of that veneration remains one of the very ways by which syncope regains the dignity that in fact it never lost. One never knows… From this pot of roses that smells of alcohol to drug induced sweats or over madness, perhaps a caution will be born that is today yet unknown. Our society, which is bent on healing all ills, even the pangs of love when they convert into depression has burned its witches and formed a tabula rasa of its potential shamans. All that is left are artists and their syncopes; all that is left is a hint of internal dissidence that would be wise to avoid domesticating.”

Tabula Rasa

CONCLUSION

In Southern Italy, this is almost the last story, in the heart of the Puglia region, a syncopal and restorative musical ritual still existed until recently. It was said that tarantulas, those poisonous spiders, stung human beings, in truth, usually men and young women. The attack was syncopal and violent. To cure it, a little orchestra was called together and played for hours for those who had been stung. They danced like spiders, flat on their stomachs, on all fours, simulating the animal that had to be exorcized. Sometimes the “tarantulized” people were hung from trees at the end of a rope, like spiders. And they swayed. When the music had its beneficial effect on this particular trance, the tarantulized people stood up again and they were cured. For a while, on a yearly rhythm the spider’s attack began again and with it, the musical ritual. The spiders were hardly ever real, the stings were almost all imaginary as you already might have guessed. 

Syncope deceives death. In all ways. By delaying the weak beat, excessively prolonging time and by making it disappear subjectively it pretends to delay progress toward the biological conclusion. By crossing the limits of consciousness, it anticipates immortality. I leave the world and then return to it. I die but I do not die. I am placed between the two, between life and death, dupe not only death but the difficult exercise of the end of life. 

For from little death to little death, the truth of aging that naturally leads upto death is overshadowed. That is why syncope is youth, striking and unchanging. Dying young like rockstars avoiding the swift wrinkle, the shortened breath, ruination, collapse and above all dying. It is not for nothing that hagiography turns sickly stench into the smell of roses and excrement into cinnamon; that is what syncope avoids and resolves. 

To delay, to anticipate, to provoke dissonance and to resolve it. Syncope is an act of rebellion against the natural deterioration of the aged body, against the living decomposition that alters the imago of ones own body as real time moves on. Better to melt into nature before one’s time, better to dissolve, better to topple intentionally into a weakness agreed to in advance…better to die than to die.

Tarantula

Mmojo

visual artist, maker, thinker, doer, experimenting in sounds and musics. based in NYC. 

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