Bear with me. i have a heavy load to cack out.
Family. This is a word that has been clanging like a church bell in my hintergrund for some months.
Do I mean family? No. I think I mean familiarization.
What does it mean to become familiar with things? How do we learn to connect?
You all know Tigger’s six listens. It is such a powerful trope, that it has become entwined in the epigenetics of this site. You have to listen at least six times to a song, a track, an album, before you can ‘get it’.
What we do when we repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat the playing of those sounds is we embed the sonic experience in our heads. We hear the same song, but not the same song, because each time what we hear is different. The first time it might be familiar or completely new. What makes it familiar? It is similar in some way to what we have heard before. Not exactly the same, but there are resonances, echoes, repeated phrases, steals.
But it is in some way new. Or it is not.
And then the next repeat. That connection from the first listen is stored. We are ready for it. We anticipate it. We maybe salivate in the beats before that sound is replayed. It has already become familiar – part of us. We are family. And on and on until:
So that is corralled, sheepdog controlled, understood, hintergrunded. Our awareness is free to absorb the next flotsam and jetsam that our tiny conscious left brain couldn’t cope with all at once, because now we have tidied away the obvious, we have tamed it, we have let it fly for the right brain to play with, while we focus on what is left of the gristle.
And so it goes on until, after six goes round via the hammer, anvil and stirrup, there is a choral unison chiming away in the cerebral hemispheres.
Familiarization.
It’s kennen, not wissen, connaître not savoir. Intuitive connection at a non-cognitive level. Don’t think it, feel it. Don’t dream it, be it. We become one with the song. Six listens in and you’ve gone full Pavlovian.
Familiarization. The Overton Window. The slowly boiling frog. The learning to connect. We Afterworders are a loose gang of eager culture vultures. We love the new, as long as it is not too new. As long as there is something familiar to what we knew before. A thin red thread links us from past to future:
It sounds like that chart hit, it is in the same genre as that film I like, it has echoes of an old favourite book. New, but not too new. Familiar.
Most of us are old. I’m moderately about a third into the demographic, by rude reckoning. We have legacy. We see further because we have experienced more. We have more to compare ‘new’ with. (More than those under – hmm, is 40 a good age to suggest as when people join the Afterlife?). That’s a lot of credit in the bank. A lot of cultural turf to turn over with the plough, as ‘new’ drops into our frames of reference.
But how much life is in that turf? Is it dead weight or vibing with worms and microbes and fungi and astronomical levels of diversity? Are we culturally fit, or slothful?
What do we do with the new? Do we welcome it in, do we make it part of the family? Or do we other it? Do we fear the different? Do we demarcate safe ground from ‘here be dragons’? Do we guard our borders?
Oh bollocks. I’ve just noticed I’ve been indulging myself on my current big theme – the riff between familiarization and estrangement, between fear and courage. I’ve gone off on one. After indulgence, I’d like to tighten up – to say that we always have a choice – between trying to familiarize ourselves with the strange, the weird, the uncanny, (let’s cut to the chase, the foreign), and trying to protect ourselves from the unknown by othering.
What is familiarization, beyond just listening to music 6 times? The world is, to use a technical term, fucked and getting fuckeder. We are going to have to adjust to a shitload (the correct SI term, I believe) of ‘new’, not least being climatic upheavals we have never experienced before, but our brethren and sisterthren in the global south are going to move northwards to avoid.
Can we listen to their lives six times before judging them?
I invite you to muse on familiarization. There’s not much research on the subject.
Get up everybody and sing!
I’m just posting this to kick it into the ‘Recently Updated’ column. But The Antlers seem to have explored what familiarization means with their album ‘Familiars’, so, double bubble!
“I was trying to understand attachment in this record. We get attached to our memories, to our ideas of who we are, of who other people are. There’s a buildup of thoughts about something that keeps you from seeing it as it truly is. I’ve been trying to clear away as much attachment as possible in the way that I think and act. Part of that is revisiting the past and letting go of things that I’ve unknowingly held on to for a long time. Most of the time you don’t even realize you’re holding onto something, it’s just a quiet whisper in the back. We’re very good at distracting ourselves, which is a way of escaping, but there’s no real way to escape yourself in the end. The more you try to escape yourself the more you’ll be hideously confronted by whatever you’re running away from, so I think it’s better to face it head on.”
Yikes! I suspect I may have to read your post six times before I can comment!
This quote interested me:
“We love the new, as long as it is not too new. As long as there is something familiar to what we knew before. A thin red thread links us from past to future:”
Can the younger generation unreservedly love the new without that red thread?
We oldies have such a vast collection of cultural reference points that it is difficult to find something that we haven’t seen before. With our blasé, “Been there, Done that.” attitude, we must be extremely irritating to the youth.
I was at the Roskilde Festival last weekend and one of my pals commented on one of the acts:
“Well, they’re not exactly breaking any new ground. But they do what they do very well. And I enjoy it. That’ll do me.”
I completely agree with him.
I did tend to pile the kitchen sink in with the dj deck, which is why I stopped halfway to reset, call bollocks, switch off and switch on again. A lot of it is a cloud of crow thoughts roosting in on the willow tree, where they’ll spend the night. Just pick it any bits that make sense of pique your interest. It’s a general peregrination around the theme of familiarization.
Can the younger generation unreservedly love the new without that red thread?
The red thread is a bit of a red herring, in that, for sure, when we oldies tug on the line, it’s been baited with so many goodies, that’s it’s bound to haul out more fish, (tin cans, old boots, etc). But that line is charged with the maternal heartbeat, we respond instinctively whatever age we are.
our blasé, “Been there, Done that.” attitude
I think that just shows you need to listen more. Ok, we love the top 10 quasi-autistic best of ever recorded in the history of life bands/albums/songs, but that’s estranging yourself from the experience of hearing it with fresh ears. It’s a convenient and labour-saving shorthand, but it’s also overfamiliarisation.
How do we familiarize ourselves with the new, while keeping the familiar fresh?
The six listens thing never applied for me. I generally (with a few exceptions) know if I like something or not when I hear it.
Even complete familiarity doesn’t lessen my enjoyment and appreciation of records I love. I’ve been playing Pet Sounds since 1966 (not continuously, mind) and it works every time.
Total unfamiliarity doesn’t mean I won’t like something, either. When I first heard Trout Mask Replica it was like music slipped sideways from another dimension, but I loved it, and still do.
Contemporary music is necessarily influenced by (they like to say “references”, or “channels”, don’t they?) music that has been made before – slightly different shuffles from an old deck. I am too familiar with what has gone before to be much interested in these echoes.
I am too familiar with what has gone before to be much interested in these echoes.
Love that.
I went to the Venice Biennale and there was a whole pavilion full of prints a Japanese bloke had made on white cotton sheets that had been laid on the floor on top of creosoted planks of wood. The stained sheets were then all pinned up for folks to wonder at; it seemed the artist thought they’d find some quality in the display, given that they had no prior reference points with which to compare the thing.
I remember leaving the pavilion thinking, “Shoddy stuff, not in any real sense a work of art as I understand it, just vague, distant echoes of the Turin shroud I suppose.”
I wandered off to look at the cow-fucking machine* instead, bored.
* a real thing.
I’ve bin at two Biennales, and equally underwhelmed. But then – they’re not for the uomo nella strada, are they? Actually, while I’m here, fuck contemporary fine art and the cow it rode in on.
Heh, heh.
*lights doobie, inhales, nods appreciatively*
The six listens thing never applied for me. I generally (with a few exceptions) know if I like something or not when I hear it.
In some ways, that’s a true gift – your doors of perception must be thoroughly cleansed – to be able too hear something in its entirety, first time off. I think Tig’s 6 listens is designed for those of us afflicted with the modern day assumptions of ADD/ADHD. Tell me how I should be feeling?
Your Trout Mask Replica experience intrigues me. Do you mean that when you first heard it, there were no resonances, assonances or reminders of things you had previously experienced?
Purity of listenerhood would seem logical if, when listening to new material, the connection with extant trumpeted references and samples from previously known tracks got in the way of appreciating ‘new’ material.
I need to go to sleep now.
I don’t hear something in its entirety the first time – that comes with repeat listenings – I hear enough to “like” it. A lazy way of saying I understand it was addressed to me and excites the connections without my having to work at it.
TMR sounded, as I tried to express, like something familiar but presented sideways, or inside-out, from another angle. Vocals, guitar, bass, drums – familiar elements. But the distance from The Beatles is vast. Familiarity usurped.
Thanks, H.P. The morning after the night before and I realize I really went off on one with my ramblings. Just have to wait for a lot more posts to push this one off the front page…
I think you express adeptly what I was grasping after with “I don’t hear something in its entirety the first time”. I suppose, apart from really basic tunes, there is always too much to absorb the first time. But there is something about that first listen – which is powerful and imprinting, that can never be reproduced.
The sighing mellotron powering up (or whatever it is) that quietly prefaces 21st Century Schizoid Man. Barely a phrase, a spectral note or two low in the mix. But it somehow tells you that something awful and malign is approaching, and you never forget that it’s there.
Do I need six listens to understand if I like something or not? Like the answer to just about any question about anything… It depends.
Some things are instant. I knew as soon as I heard A Day In The Life it was love at first sight (listen). But I certainly didn’t like Troutmaskreplica first time round. The Incredible String Band occurs to me as an act I had to persevere with a bit before they clicked with me.
Are youngsters these days missing a ‘red thread’, by which I take it you mean a sense of connection, history, context in their music instead of just experiencing all music as a floating entity with endless choice? Yes I think they are. Those who listen wider also listen shallower!
What’s the answer? I don’t know.
Arthur you may think youngsters are missing a red thread. I’d suggest that’s impossible – unless we are taking pre-verbal toddlers. Everyone has memory to draw on when experiencing the new – it’s how we make sense of the world – compare it to what we’ve experienced before and readjust how we understand the world based on that comparison.
Less adjustment necessary (possible) as we get older as we often think we understand already – but in fact often those old paradigms that have stood us in good stead over the years, really do need a thorough rethink.
Can I at this point give sal a reach-around for his screed? More of this kind of thing.
Heh heh! You tug away, old fruit. It’s not like anyone else is watching right now.
I would not be so certain about that!! The walls have eyes.
Yikes! You are really getting into some interesting questions here. What kind of music do toddlers and young children enjoy? And why?
The six listen rule was invented to admonish my adult offspring. They were in the habit of pressing the skip-to-next-track button within fifteen seconds. Then to the next, then the next, being until they landed on something they could be bothered to actually allow to play through. Even so, I was never sure they were actually listening, though my daughter took me by surprise once when she rapped along, word for word, to Kanye’s All Of The Lights. They turned their nose up at physical product because that was less easy to jump, using only that newfangled way of exploiting musical artists, streaming.
Now, I didn’t mind them making their mind up instantly. It was the ruthless dissing that upset. The musicians had spent 10,000 hours honing their craft, only to be dismissed as crap within fifteen seconds. Fair enough, if you decide quickly a song is not for you but don’t be so judgemental unless you have listened to the whole thing. More than that, give it a good to before running round the streets declaring that John Coltrane is shite. Listen six times.
There are times I decide a track is not for me within a single listen, but you won’t find me telling everyone it’s rubbish. Unlike HP, there have been plenty of occasions when a track has grown, for me, over six listens and plenty when something seemed great at first but whose appeal faded.
I never gave Prog the time of day in the seventies. I heard it but never really listened. Now, there are some Prog albums that I think are excellent, despite almost all of them sounding dated.
There are some artists that reveal more little secrets the more I listen. With Steely Dan, for example, I have listened carefully to all their albums for decades but still get taken by surprise. It helps to shake things up a bit with a remix of listening to cover versions of the songs. Nightfly Live is a revelation.
Since 2016, I’ve been posting a series of Features on albums that have become part of my DNA over the decades. I’ve tried to avoid the usual suspects. However, during lockdown, I found the albums of 1973 to be my comfort zone. Their familiarity soothed me (Countdown To Ecstasy being one of them). None of those records are any more sophisticated than any released this year. There is plenty of great music being released every day if you have the time, energy and inclination to find something to float your boat. This year, “new” classical music and jazz have dominated my listening. My taste has changed over time. The kind of new I like is dissonant and challenging. Then, I curl up into a ball back in 1973.
My focus on the six listen rule was meant as a way in, via music, to the general topic of familiarisation. How we get used to things, people, ideas, etc and accept them or at least accommodate them.
For example, the Conservatives were familiar with Johnson, they just adjusted to accommodate his (ha-ha, so entertaining) quirks and foibles for transactional purposes.
We all compromise, probably most of all with our actual families, who we don’t always see eye-to-eye with, but needs must for harmony and the greater good.
Is there a social equivalent of the six listen rule? I think you’re an utter cad and a bounder. Everything in my experience, all my beliefs and values tell me you are an utter shit, but if I get to know you a bit better, I might start to understand what makes you that way, and what triggers to press (or not press) to develop a functional relationship.
Humans quickly adapt and get used to anything. A perfect example is staying at home during the pandemic. There is also a tension with a desire to stretch the rules.
The Tories experienced boiler frog syndrome with Boris. They thought their party machinery would contain his excesses. They thought he would surround himself with responsible adults in number ten as he almost did as London Mayor. They chose him to unite a country split 50/50 on Brexit. They thought he could reach parts of the country other leaders couldn’t. Once in place, Boris was Boris. They got used to Boris. The water the Tories were swimming in started to heat up. There was already rancour in Westminster over Brexit. Paroguing Parliament seemed almost routine. Then, he won a landslide. They were right, he did have electoral fairy dust. And they were stuck with him. He threw all of the grown ups out of cabinet, got a bunch of weirdos in to run number ten and turned to Carrie for most of his advice. Half the backbenchers owe their seat to him and the entire cabinet would never have been ministers under anyone else. A pandemic meant all bets were off. The frogs couldn’t leap out of the pan.
The Tories have moved against him now because they believe he is a liability in the eyes of the voters. He is still convinced he has the fairy dust and could win an election, hence his bitter ‘resignation’ speech. The MPs are only looking out for themselves. They would still put up with Boris’s lies and misbehaviour if they thought they would win the next election. It’s nothing to do with familiarity and everything to do with selfish expediency.
Still. Carrie Johnson now, I wouldn’t mind giving her six tries. Getting familiar.
Funnily enough for this thread, Boris Johnson’s got about six families.
Apparently, she is intelligent, warm and very funny. Tremendous company. She seems to find power attractive. Are you powerful, H.P.?
You’re asking this of the man who bestrides The Afterword like Colosseum?
Damn this predictive teat…. er, text
Humans quickly adapt and get used to anything. Up to a point, yes. Until it becomes painful, by which point, the frog boils (- or jumps out of the pot, which I think is what actually happens). Adaptation is a wonderful thing – the world is always changing and we need to familiarize ourselves with those changes, or hand over the reins to those who are already familiar.
But it can also be a terrible thing.
Yours is a magnificent and concise summary of the Tory/Johnson match of expediency, although I think the frog story that is more apt as analogy is the one with the scorpion (why do frogs always get it in the neck? Apart from when they are kissed by princesses?). I still think it is also a story of familiarity – the negative side of it. The MPs thought they were familiar with ‘good old Boris’ when they elected him, they liked the mob-appealing bullying he employed in parliament, the banter, the trolling – it made them feel good. But familiarization doesn’t lead to knowledge – it’s experienced in the gut, not the brain – it relies on generalizations, assumptions – and that lazy approach – unchallenging, unquestioning – left them open to his exploitation.
Because his genius (or appalling flaw) is to take any rule, system, standard and set it alight, trash it, and feed off the shock and reaction. Sometimes old structures need to be replaced. But a trail of destruction with nothing to replace it sooner or later gets noticed, even by the comfortably-bubbling frogs – the old familiarities are no longer there.