I went to an interesting goa party the other night, and got into this conversation about the music with my friend Jon, who goes to Rainbow Gatherings a lot. He was telling me about the gatherings, and how they have been bringing sound systems to the parking lots the last few times or so. Then I said that ravers and the rainbow people must totally get along and such things to which he said yes, then also said that Rainbow Gatherings occur without electric anything, just acoustical instruments, as a means of 'returning to Mother Earth'. To that I said, well, this aspect of technology, this music is totally symbiotic with the Earth... to which he said a lot of 'rainbows' would disagree, cuz all the sounds are so unnatural, all synthetic, and so on... at this point I let the conversation drop and we said goodbye with a cheerful "see ya at Burning Man!" but later I pondered the question at hand - symbiosis - and my conclusions came out something like this:
There is nothing inherently wrong with technology, nor does technology have to be at dissonance with the Earth. It is the use of technology, and the purposes for which it is used that determines its dissonant or resonant quality with regards to the Earth.
The sounds, though 'synthetic', are merely pulsations of energy along the medium, which is air, that have a particular arrangement of harmonics which make each sound unique. Thus the conclusion that a sound is unnatural is drawn by looking at how the sound was created, by a natural or unnatural means.
But why/when would tecnhology be looked at as unnatural? Would acoustic drums be considered unnatural? Probably not... But yet one can't say they are not a piece of technology, though quite primitive to our standards, still technology.
So what am I ranting about? I feel that technology often gets a bad rap for all the dissonance that is occuring on our planet today, and I feel that as always, the problem lies within ourselves, *we* are at dissonance with the Earth, not our technology, for all technology is of the Earth to begin with. It is the way *we* twist and bend the Earth to our desires that brings us out of symbiosis. Just as it is the way we twist and bend the Earth that can bring us back into symbiosis, such as drums, speakers, amps and turntables...
What if humans learned to live with technology that is symbiotic to the Earth and ourselves? The possibilities are endless. But first we had to extract out of the Earth all the technological wizardry, then some time in the future perhaps, humans learn exactly to what divine purposes this technology can be used...
This has been a random voyage thru some of my thoughts. thank you for listening :)
*ahau*
-tom