Episode 28: Weird Music, Part Two

Weird Studies

"Music is worth living for," Andrew W.K. sings in his latest rock anthem. In this second episode on the weirdness of music, JF and Phil focus on two works steeped in ambiguity and paradox: Bob Dylan's "Jokerman," from the landmark post-Christian album Infidels, and Franz Liszt's "Mephisto Waltz, No. 1: The Dance at the Village Inn," inspired by an episode in the Faust legend. If this conversation has a central theme, it may be music's power to unhinge every fixed binary, from God and the Devil to culture and nature. Music, as exemplified in these pieces, can put us in touch with the abiding mystery of the eternal in the historical, the unhuman in the human... The hills are alive!

REFERENCES

Bob Dylan, "Jokerman"
Franz Liszt, “Mephisto Waltz no. 1,” performed by Boris Berezovsky

Andrew WK, "Music is Worth Living For"
Leonard Cohen, “The Future”
C.G. Jung, Aion
Douglas Rushkoff, Testament
The Guardian, “Carthaginians sacrificed own children, archaeologists say”
Garry Wills, "Our Moloch"
Minoan snake goddess statues
Richard Wagner, Parsifal http://www.monsalvat.no/
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts
Beckett, Not I
Nikolaus Lenau, German Romantic poet
Wolgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1, translated by David Luke
Weird Studies, Episode 3: Sin: "Ecstasy, and the White People"