The Living Music List #15: On Black Mirrors and the Black Hole

Are we doomed to doomscroll? Maybe new music will help: we've got plenty, from artists like Bon Iver, Alaskan Tapes, Scott Lawlor, Elkan, and more

Currently listening to: S P E Y S I D E by Bon Iver

New Bon Iver is here, and it’s classic For Emma-type folk goodness (AKA nature is healing). At once depressingly reflective and acceptingly hopeful, Justin Vernon’s voice shines here atop easy guitar. One line from the lyrics to summarize the feeling of this track: “Nothing’s really happened like I thought it would.”

Reflection

Hello, friend.

How are you feeling? Here’s how I’ve been feeling this week (here and there):

DOOMSCROLL

I don’t know why

I have piled sandbags underneath my eyes

I tried to sleep last night

I turned off the lights at a reasonable time

Except one

Except that little pocket pack of sun

Except that eternally burning hand lamp whose job is never done

Except my constant companion hellbent on having fun

Or not

Or another flash of rot

Or another twenty minutes blinked away on the spot

Or a confusingly compelling case of envying what I haven’t got

Why can’t I put you down?

Why won’t this carousel stop spinning around?

Why do I listen to a false life without sound?

Why is this world always destruction-bound?

I am a deer caught in the headlights

I am a slave to my device

I am going down without a fight

I am trapped in this simulation of a life

We cannot get out

We are shadows in the dark

We cannot get out

So, that’s where I’m at. Or at least, that’s where I was a few nights ago. I’ve made some changes since then—implemented some screen time settings, deleted a few apps, tried to redirect the bursts of energy before bedtime to writing in a notebook instead of a laptop or notes on my phone.

It’s hard though, man. They really got us, didn’t they? Exploited the deepest parts of our monkey brains with the perfect weapons of addiction. It’s not just the devices, either. It’s the internet, and the media headlines, and the always-open social forums. It’s all of it conjoined in a perfect storm of stimulation.

I know, I know—”it’s those damn phones” is undoubtedly the most original thought of the week. But that’s ironic, isn’t it? That we all openly acknowledge how fucked we are in this abusive relationship with our technology, and yet we mostly carry right on letting it sap the vigor from our bodies. It’s like we’re sleeping on an open patch of frozen ground and trying to ignore the fact we’re freezing to death.

Do you struggle with this as much as I do? Am I projecting? It’s felt lately like my YouTube algorithm is dedicated to reminding me that there are so many others out there who have climbed out of this hole.

Believe me, though, I am trying. I’ve been off most social media for a year or two now. So what am I still picking up my phone once a minute for?

The disturbing answer is: nothing, really. Half the time, I just look at the clock, peek at my lockscreen, unlock my phone and then forget why I did so. It’s pure, mindless habit, like biting my nails (which I’m also terrible about). Sure, I still do occasionally scroll on Reddit or Substack Notes—I haven’t given everything up. But with screentime limits on, the apps have become less of an issue.

I hate the push and pull of this urge to constantly consume, to stimulate myself, to check-in with the rest of the world about things that don’t really matter. Yet much in the way I feel I’ve disregarded the lasting nature of my nail-biting habit, I worry that I sometimes lean into the compulsion and saturate my brain for awhile because, well, it’s more pleasant than dealing with other responsibilities. Or at least, that’s the magnificent lie I allow myself to believe.

That poem I wrote, however, must be my ego reaching out from inside to slap me in the face and shout, “STOP BELIEVING IT!”

With all the dystopic futures presented in Netflix’s BLACK MIRROR series, we often forget the foundational idea behind the title: when our screens go dark, they become black mirrors, and all we are left with is a shadowy reflection of ourselves.

This sounds, on the surface, a bit silly, really. Oh, how terrifying—my own reflection! That’s missing the point, though: When our technology goes dark, what is humanity left with?

Even this question may earn eyerolls—we got by without technology for most of our history! While true, our current cohort of humanity has not. Nearly everyone alive today is well adjusted to the assistance of our tech. It defines the way we live, socialize, and experience events. We are in the throes of adaptation, forcing ourselves to get used to an overwhelming amount of global input that no other group of humans has had to experience.

We’re not wired for this. But it’s the reality. Or at least, that’s what society is attempting to believe. Any communication scholar would remind us that reality is both individually and collectively imagined—socially constructed, as Berger and Luckmann put it. The course we’re on now suggests a trajectory toward the complete conjuction of humanity and techonology—we all might end up part robot at some point, and be physically unable to separate ourselves.

I think all of us can agree, though, that there is still a great big natural world out there, and we are a natural part of it. I don’t want us to lose that purest form of humanity, in which we are just like all the other fauna, surviving out in the forest, taking warmth from the sun, flourishing among the flowers and feeling the wind on our faces.

The current black hole of technology seems to be trying to suck us away from all of that. To where? A new kind of reality under construction, not by the human collective or small groups of us, but by a very select few and their algorithms. And it’s a reality in which we’re not just addicted to our devices, but we are living in the full-on matrix into which they are evolving (and into which we are following them).

I saw

Andrew Tasselmyer

post a note on Substack about a recent NYTimes article taken from The Ezra Klein show, which was an interview with novelist and essayist Zadie Smith about a variety of topics, including “Populists, Frauds, and Flip Phones.” I’d like to end this letter with this bullseye quote from Smith:

When you wake up in the morning and you turn to your social app, you are being instructed on what issue of the day is what to be interested in. The news has always played some element in doing that, but this is total. And it’s not even, to me, the content of those thoughts. There’s a lot of emphasis put on the kind of politics expressed on these platforms to the right or to the left. To me, it’s the structure — that it’s structured in a certain way. That an argument is this long, that there are two sides to every debate, that they must be in fierce contest with each other — that is actually structuring the way you think about thought.

And I don’t think anyone of my age who knows anyone they knew in 2008 thinks that that person has not been seriously modified.

And that’s OK. All mediums modify you. Books modify you, TV modifies you, radio modifies you. The social life of a 16th-century village modifies you. But the question becomes: Who do you want to be modified by, and to what degree? That’s my only question.

And when I look at the people who have designed these things — what they want, what their aims are, what they think a human being is or should be — the humans I know and love, this machinery is not worthy of them. That’s the best way I can put it.

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Music Recommendations

Hello again, friend.

Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you enjoyed the reflection—and I hope you finish reading this and have a chance to take a break from whatever screen you’re reading it on to go outside.

Happy listening.

The Living Music List—Ambient

Note: All of the below ambient projects are available on Bandcamp. * and bold denotes reader-submitted work—thank you!

1. willowlaun by willowlaun (album / drone, electroacoustic) [Independent / Bandcamp]*

2. Something Ephemeral by Alaskan Tapes (album / minimalist, drone) [Nettwerk Music Group / Bandcamp]

3. Glass House by Patrick Shiroishi (album / experimental, jazz) [Otherly Love Records / Bandcamp]

4. At Every Corner by Mara (album / spoken word, experimental) [Pure Space / Bandcamp]

5. Futuristic Dereliction by Alphaxone & Onasander (album / dark ambient, electronica) [Cryo Chamber / Bandcamp]

6. Moment by still fades (album / drone, lofi) [Independent / Bandcamp]

7. Magnetic Series by Macrogramma (album / drone, experimental) [Lᴏɴᴛᴀɴᴏ Series / Bandcamp]

8. Cathedral in the Desert by Scott Lawlor (album / field recordings, drone) [Independent / Bandcamp]

9. Raku Plateaux by jarguna (album / drone, electroacoustic) [ROHS! / Bandcamp]

10. FR-02 Field Recordings Sample Library by Go Outside (compilation / field recordings [note: this is a huge set of 80 royalty-free field recordings, shoutout to Andrew Shaffer aka Go Outside for putting this together, feels perfectly timed with today’s reflection]) [Independent / Bandcamp]

11. Performance Anxiety by Robert Turman (album / noise, experimental) [Independent / Bandcamp]

12. Tribute to Halberstadt by Bernhard Wöstheinrich (album / dark ambient, drone) [Independent / Bandcamp]

The Living Music List—All Genres

Note: All of the below projects are available on major streaming services.

1. Elkan by Elkan (album / electronic [semi-ambient, but didn’t feel fully right on the other list])

2. DC15 by Von Schommer (album / electronic [a few ambient-ish tracks])

3. Industry 4.0 EP by DJ Stingray 313 (EP / electronic)

4. In Full Effect by Tim Reaper & Kloke (album / electronic)

5. Windswept by Photay (album / electronic)

6. In Waves by Jamie xx (album / electronic)

7. Forastero by Terror/Cactus (album / electronic)

8. go! (George Daniel Remixes) by saltue & Nakammura Minami (single / electronic)

9. Md003 by Mumdance (single / dance)

10. Saturn Dayz by BLACKSTARKIDS (album / alt electronic)

11. S P E Y S I D E by Bon Iver (single / folk)

12. Odyssey by Nubya Garcia (album / jazz)

13. Entity by Neil Cowley Trio (album / jazz [P.S. Shoutout to a fellow Cowley! No relation that I’m aware of, though])

14. Lifescape by Taka Nawashiro (album / jazz)

15. Portals Volume 2: Returning by Caroline Davis (album / jazz)

16. Halogen by Lampen (album / jazz)

17. Circles by Tanukichan (EP / shoegaze)

18. Surviving the Dream by FIDLAR (album / alternative)

19. Flood by Hippo Campus (album / alternative)

20. Dream 2 by tomemitsu (album / alternative)

21. Lunch by Quinn XCII (album / pop)

22. 7 by Nellly Furtado (album / pop)

23. The Genuine Articulate by The Alchemist (album / hip-hop/rap)

24. MIXTAPE PLUTO by Future (album / hip-hop/rap)

25. The Academy by Lutalo (album / indie rock)

26. Orion by Orion Sun (album / R&B/soul)

27. Sink Your Teeth by Neon Trees (album / alternative)

28. Five Dice, All Threes by Bright Eyes (album / alternative)

29. WHOLESOME EVIL FANTASY by Indigo De Souza (single / alt electro pop)

30. Nadir by Groza (album / metal)

31. Into the Way by Próxima Parada (album / R&B/soul)

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That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.

Your friend,

Melted Form

Remember to listen to the hum, buzz, & hiss of the world around you—there is music to be heard there.

Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:

The Living Music List #14: On Inevitable Suffering

Let’s Get in Touch

Are you an artist, label owner or member of the press? Want an in-depth feature of your upcoming release, an advertisement, or a guest post for a future Hum, Buzz, & Hiss issue? Get in touch with me at meltedform@gmail.com. As always, I would love to hear and recommend your music, especially if it’s new and ambient/experimental.

Also, you can keep up with updates from me and hear more of the music I’m listening to by following me on Substack Notes. In my opinion, Substack is better in the app! Join our community of music-loving writers and readers discussing the latest releases, old gems, and everything in between.