The Joy of Going Bonkers: The Exuberant Music of Anna Meredith

The Joy of Going Bonkers

The Exuberant Music
of Anna Meredith

and

The Crazy Metaphysics
of Alfred North Whitehead

The Joy of Being Alive in an Exuberant, Music-Making Universe

The most radical idea in Whitehead’s philosophy is not that everything is present in everything else, or that the universe is composed of events not things, or that God is all-loving but not all-powerful. It is that the very being of an actuality is an act of self-enjoyment. Whereas other philosophies might see the world as a collection of insentient objects; Whitehead sees it as a community of self-enjoying subjects. Self-enjoyment is not a mere property of an actuality, apart from which it could still be actual. It is the real internal constitution of that entity. Complementary to this idea is an equally radical idea: namely that the self-enjoyment of an actuality arises out of many actualities and is partly composed of them. The self is enjoyed is both one and many. It is the many becoming one. Anna Meredith gives acoustic expression to Whitehead's idea of communal self-enjoyment. In the act of making music with her band in the Tiny Desk concert, she is enjoying herself and also enjoying the way that other members of the band enjoy themselves, such that they are part of her enjoyment. And, of course, they are doing the same. You see a community of self-enjoying subjects. And there is an exuberance, indeed a celebration, of this activity. She makes you feel “as if you’re strapped in her spaceship’s sidecar as she goes rampaging around the universe.” Whitehead’s rampage is his metaphysics; Anna Meredith's is her music making. Yes, there is sadness in the world. Not all is beautiful. but everything -- everything! -- aims at enjoyment, and this gives life its exuberance. (Jay McDaniel)

"Out of nearly 700 performances at the Tiny Desk,
this is simply the most exhilarating." (Bob Boilen, NPR)

Anna Meredith Webpage

"Composer and producer Anna Meredith's wild music blends synthesizers and acoustic instruments. She makes it feel as if you're strapped in her spaceship's sidecar as she goes rampaging around the universe...Her trademark as an arranger is intensely detailed maximalism,.."The Vapours" is equally bonkers, and sounds like a roomful of overheated machines on the precipice of exploding, while "Shill" thrashes like a herd of angry bull elephants romping in a lake." (Laura Snapes, Review in Pitchfork)

The Joy of Being Alive

The organic philosophy interprets experience as meaning the ‘self-enjoyment of being one among many, and of being one arising out of the composition of many. (Alfred North Whitehead)

Whitehead and Meredith

I went a bit bonkers when I first read Whitehead. But it was a good bonkers, an enjoyable bonkers. He said that everything in the universe aims at self-enjoyment: the joy of being alive. It made me think that the universe might be a lot more exuberant, a lot more exhilarating, than I had thought. I had the same feeling when I watched the Tiny Desk concert by Anna Meredith. Her whole group seemed to go bonkers toward the end of the concert. They were enjoying themselves as individuals and also emerging out of their relationships with one another. It seemed very Whiteheadian to me. Crazy metaphysics and crazy music: that's what the world needs. (Jay McDaniel)

Flourishing

"In a world that so often fears life and worships death, it is helpful as a counter-measure to go bonkers, albeit in non-violent ways. Show your colors, make your sounds, go nuts as a reminder that, after all, life is for the living. The act of living is itself an event, a happening, in which the many become one and are increased by one. Nothing stays the same, but deep down within the depths of matter there's a constant celebration, a joy for living. This is what we need: a recovery of the possibility of flourishing, of joy. (Jay McDaniel)

Joy for its own sake

Joy for its own sake, laughter and conviviality without pretext, meeting time's advance with unapologetic delight, raucous noise, good friends — these are nothing less than the eruption of the hidden light cracking the conventional crust of our mature good sense, our dehumanizing obsession with control, our idolatrous reliance on possession as salvation. (Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson)

Crazy Metaphysics

Description of a course taught by Elie During, Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS, presumably written by Dr. During himself:

"Originally used to discredit the speculations of British romanticism, the expression « crazy metaphysics » is often targeted today at those philosophical doctrines which strike commonsense as far-fetched, counter-intuitive or incredibly bizarre. The philosophy of Alfred NorthWhitehead (1861-1947) seems a good candidate. After pioneering work in the foundations ofmathematics, which led to the publication of the celebrated Principia Mathematica (1910-1913, co-authored with Bertrand Russell), Whitehead went on his own way to develop new and ingenious views on the philosophy of science as well as classical metaphysical issues, in an attempt to reconcile immediate experience, science and metaphysics. Some of his claims are assuredly puzzling. For example, objects do not have simple spatial or temporal location:“in a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times”. Events do not “happen” to objects; rather, it is objects that are aspects or dimensions of events. An event can last for hours, such as the Great Pyramid between 5pm and 11pm. Processes, not substances, are the fundamental constituents of the world (“the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system”). God himself is in some respect temporal and mutable. And yet one should also acknowledge the importance of “eternal objects”! Can metaphysics get any crazier? The paradox is that Whitehead liked to describe himself as a philosopher of “common sense”. Some of his seemingly most revolutionary ideas stem from a distrust of the common tendency to mistake the abstract for the concrete (“fallacy of misplaced concreteness”), that is to substitute elaborate intellectual schemes for immediate experience. We shall try to elucidate this paradox by studying excerpts from some of Whitehead’s major works: The Concept of Nature (1920),
Science and the Modern World (1926), Process and Reality (1929). Drawing parallels with earlier and later philosophers(Berkeley, Leibniz, Bergson, James, contemporary “four-dimensionalists”) will be useful in this task."

Bonkers

quotes from Spirituality and Practice

Only now have I finally realized that my life has been an unending field trip. And I have tried hard not to be a tourist. But to be an adventurer, a traveler, an explorer, a learner, and a pilgrim. (Robert Fulghum)
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Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe — a moment that never was before and never will be again (Pablo Casals)
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The noblest joy of the senses, the holiest piece of the heart, the most resplendent luster of all good works derives from this: that the creature puts his or her heart wholly into what he or she does. (Mechtild of Magdeburg)