Schopenhauer - Tim Hecker - AMPS, DRUGS, MELLOTRON

Tim Hecker - AMPS, DRUGS, MELLOTRON

This song demonstrates what I understand of Schopenhauer's argument, which is that to understand the meaning of life in a nihilist phantasmagoria of representation we must attend to the perceptual realm. (Knowledge of the Idea, 80) This means we must see the beauty to be found when the subject's sense becomes purely objectified in music. Listening to "AMPS, DRUGS, MELLOTRON" is a simple but singular auditory experience. The production uses several instruments that will draw a familiar sense of beauty to Westerners, but one must listen well in order to hear the beauty of the entire piece.  The many instruments, like the pizzicato strings, and samples, like the stormy thunder, that lie dormant and only pop up at certain moments also demonstrate the capacity for things to hide in our own perception when we don't attend to the act of listening. One must listen to hear. One might attend to its form, but this piece will sweep this listener along with its beauty, which is music's form. To attend to form, which this piece invites, is to attend to its beauty. The beauty here does not inspire reflection on anything except its own beauty, and thus justifies its own existence by being its own meaning, its singular beauty.