I wasn't aware of the Fathers and Sons connection - which I should have been because my Senior English teacher gave me a copy of it when I graduated high school. But at 18 I was ready to go off to college to be an English major - British lit was my thing (I thought) - and 19th century Russian novels weren't exactly on the list of my other interests. It languished on bookshelves in various rooms, flats, houses, etc. until one day I realised it was gone - still unread. And it remains still unread to this day - but I'm going to rectify this soon. There's a reason she gave me that particular book - and maybe now, all these years later, I'll understand what it was.
Love the Sounds (as usual!). I was thinking the mid-90s needs more representation (although Everclear is a solid choice). Maybe “Just What You Are” by Aimee Mann (aka the 9-toed nihilist in “The Big Lebowski”)?
Wow - completely missed that it was Aimee Mann in that role! Love that!
Glad you like the Sounds - it's one of my favourite parts of the letter. And the other night I was thinking how amazing it is that - after a year and 500+ songs - that, with the exception of two mistakes, I've not repeated any - and that there are SO MANY more to choose from. And you're absolutely right: when it's not thematic, I tend to lean 60s/70s, occasional 80s and more recent stuff ... but the mid-90s are sorely unrepresented. That period won't be appropriate for the next couple of Stops, but I'll definitely be searching for and suggesting that era in the near future.
Of course, if you have any suggestions - please let me know!
The other late 19th century frisson about nihilism occurred with the fin de siecle's misinterpretation of Nietzsche. But he in turn has already misrecognized Buddhism as a form of Eastern nihilism. By the 1920s both of these had faded given WW1 had presented a much more material example of the 'will to nothingness' through self-annihilation. In their stead, a more interesting phenomenological understanding arose, with Heidegger's idea of 'Nothing' as the very something about which Dasein's existential anxiety orbited. It serves us as both a caution and as the sounding board for a will to life. It is difficult to imagine and yet it is not nothing per se but rather like 'The Nothing'; a palpable sense of non-existence which I have referred to as 'inexistential'; something which has not yet arrived in recognizable form. It only does so, and for each of us, when in death our beings are completed.
I couldn't answer that, and not just due to the obvious reasons, for now! For Heidegger, my being is completed in death, so no experience of 'release' could thence occur. So to speak of it as a an attainment would be an external comment only. A kind of valuation by those left 'behind' which presents an aspiration.
"...but he knew it was all nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name..."
Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
And, of course, 'nothing from nothing leaves nothing.' Billy Preston.
Though I know this line because of a reference in - I think - a Notorious Big song? Hmm.
Well, you opened a door into nihilism that I didn’t know existed. Thank you.
I wasn't aware of the Fathers and Sons connection - which I should have been because my Senior English teacher gave me a copy of it when I graduated high school. But at 18 I was ready to go off to college to be an English major - British lit was my thing (I thought) - and 19th century Russian novels weren't exactly on the list of my other interests. It languished on bookshelves in various rooms, flats, houses, etc. until one day I realised it was gone - still unread. And it remains still unread to this day - but I'm going to rectify this soon. There's a reason she gave me that particular book - and maybe now, all these years later, I'll understand what it was.
Love the Sounds (as usual!). I was thinking the mid-90s needs more representation (although Everclear is a solid choice). Maybe “Just What You Are” by Aimee Mann (aka the 9-toed nihilist in “The Big Lebowski”)?
Wow - completely missed that it was Aimee Mann in that role! Love that!
Glad you like the Sounds - it's one of my favourite parts of the letter. And the other night I was thinking how amazing it is that - after a year and 500+ songs - that, with the exception of two mistakes, I've not repeated any - and that there are SO MANY more to choose from. And you're absolutely right: when it's not thematic, I tend to lean 60s/70s, occasional 80s and more recent stuff ... but the mid-90s are sorely unrepresented. That period won't be appropriate for the next couple of Stops, but I'll definitely be searching for and suggesting that era in the near future.
Of course, if you have any suggestions - please let me know!
The other late 19th century frisson about nihilism occurred with the fin de siecle's misinterpretation of Nietzsche. But he in turn has already misrecognized Buddhism as a form of Eastern nihilism. By the 1920s both of these had faded given WW1 had presented a much more material example of the 'will to nothingness' through self-annihilation. In their stead, a more interesting phenomenological understanding arose, with Heidegger's idea of 'Nothing' as the very something about which Dasein's existential anxiety orbited. It serves us as both a caution and as the sounding board for a will to life. It is difficult to imagine and yet it is not nothing per se but rather like 'The Nothing'; a palpable sense of non-existence which I have referred to as 'inexistential'; something which has not yet arrived in recognizable form. It only does so, and for each of us, when in death our beings are completed.
Very interesting - though is 'inexistential' (or 'inexistentialism'?) - with its inevitable completion
at death, not just a reframing of Buddhism's paranibbana? The final release? Which - eventually - everyone will attain?
I couldn't answer that, and not just due to the obvious reasons, for now! For Heidegger, my being is completed in death, so no experience of 'release' could thence occur. So to speak of it as a an attainment would be an external comment only. A kind of valuation by those left 'behind' which presents an aspiration.