W E R T H E R
E F F E C T

- A R P s y c h e d e l i c
P r o j e c t -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:01:54] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"´We were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.´ (A.H.)

´It's a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it's healthy that people should have this experience.´ (A.H.)

´For until this morning I had known contemplation only in its humbler, its more ordinary forms - as discursive thinking; as a rapt absorption in poetry or painting or music, as a patient waiting upon those inspirations, without which even the prosiest writer cannot hope to accomplish anything; as occasional glimpses, in nature, of Wordsworth's 'something far more deeply interfused'; as systematic silence leading, sometimes, to hints of an 'obscure knowledge'. But now I knew contemplation at its height.´ (A.H.)

I do not know about the music to which Aldous Huxley referred but undoubtedly now we can leave behind the humble and ordinary character in terms of the sonic phenomenon focused here. In ´WERTHER EFFECT - ARPsychedelic Project´, we´re certainly at the heights.

For this, the authenticity of each composition draws attention. From the invocation of (in the popular psychedelic genre, an atypical) breathtaking and engaging free jazzy rhythm (others may also call it experimental rock) to the insertion of a punctuated military march as a strategic contrasting element; from some mesmerizing harmonies of spectral background to a Piece entirely turned to (classical) electronic language, a true saga (it's thirty-nine minutes and forty-six seconds) that impeccably illustrates what this musical form historically was and still is (in its best sense); from the implementation of the word under the transcendental refinement of sound poetry to the suggestion of interlacing (but by approaches, still today, subtly unusual) between Eastern and Western stylistics; from the exploration of a wide range of instruments having its timbristic alphabet immeasurably valued until the passage through audible ambiences that provide absolutely abductive landscapes, and so on.

Entirely fertilized by various nuances and gradations of psychedelistic auræ, this is one of the most conscientious proles of O.M., (in one of the ingenious correlations that the articulated brain of Otacílio usually performs) encompassing a complex thematic of strong individual & collectivist, social & political impact. And inexorably a-r-t-i-s-t-i-c! ´This world is but a canvas to our
imagination´, uttered Henry David Thoreau. Melgaço brings us closer to paints and brushes and colors and shapes that go beyond our imaginations because he remind us that we have not only fantasize, reflect, conjecture, theorize however must and can even design, construct, demolish, reconstruct, concretize more and more in favor of t-h-e world, [and as much as ´some´ - the (ever current) ruling clique? - try to make us alienated about it] o-u-r world.

´WERTHER EFFECT - ARPsychedelic Project´ brings to light a conceptual compound that´s extremely pertinent to the time in which we live. The allusions are very well exposed and the step given ahead by O.M. exceeds the tone of recognition & warning and points to evolutionary paths in an updated and surpassing prism. Even more fermented today: the suspicious side of what can be defined in a framework called p-r-o-p-a-g-a-n-d-a (see the other review, just below), gains the overwhelming expansiveness of hyper technology, and thus the excessive information results in scarcity of formation, causing the same effects to take on a frightening proportion. All this, according to Otacílio, makes the contemporaneity (and the becoming), in addition to an interesting volatility, (on the other hand) a fertile terrain for various dimensions of the Werther effect. Otacílio, like every great artist, is, in part, visionary in pointing to palpitating questions which are duly announced and dialected as well as, culturally, realizing such embodiment of syllogisms in the form of music.

Active & resistant (and yet remaining a free spirit), Melgaço corroborates the words of Keith Haring: ´I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.´ Moreover, the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist extrapolates the boundaries of artistic niches, composing and multi-instrumentalizing several other triggers. In this way, I think he also confirms Denis Diderot: ´When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.´" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"P A R T 1

There are three references that permeate such work of Otacílio Melgaço: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aldous Leonard Huxley and Vivienne Isabel Swire (known as Dame Vivienne Westwood).

>> From the first:

A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media.

A spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide is known as the Werther effect, following Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

One of the earliest known associations between the media and suicide arose from Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther). Soon after its publication in 1774, young men began to mimic the main character by dressing in yellow pants and blue jackets. In the novel, Werther shoots himself with a pistol after he is rejected by the woman he loves, and shortly after its publication there were reports of young men using the same method to kill themselves in an act of hopelessness.

This resulted in the book being banned in several places. Hence the term ´Werther effect´, used in the technical literature to designate copycat suicides. The term was coined by researcher David Phillips in 1974, two centuries after Goethe's novel was published. Reports in 1985 and 1989 by Phillips and his colleagues found that suicides and other accidents seem to rise after a well-publicized suicide;

>> From the second:

Always lord of an acute perception of reality and even premonitory for being so sharp: Aldous Huxley, once, stated that the world is a victim of three evils:

Organised Lying;

Nationalistic Idolatry;

and, for Mr. Huxley, the worst:

Non-Stop Distraction.

[These misfortunes could be summed up in one word:

Propaganda.]

Below, an excerpt from the British author's own testimony:

´In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were ´solemn and rare,´ there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where the performances though frequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema.

In ´Brave New World´ non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation. The other world of religion is different from the other world of entertainment; but they resemble one another in being most decidedly ´not of this world.´ Both are distractions and, if lived in too continuously, both can become, in Marx's phrase ´the opium of the people´ and so a threat to freedom. Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures.

A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it´;

>> From the third:

Vivienne Westwood was sensitized and actively expressed herself about the Huxleyan triad:

Organised Lying > ´Everyone accepts organized lying. In general, we don't think; we have little concept of a world outside our perception of uniform opinion and perverse blinkered vision. We all follow others; our little experts;´

Nationalistic Idolatry > ´A nation doesn’t differentiate between boundaries, language or race. The UN defines a nation as ´a society possessing the means of making war.´ Conflict is natural; however war pushes this past the line. We have a natural attachment to our place of origin and familiar people. Nationalism uses propaganda to create a loyalty to areas with which the individual is unacquainted. Nationalism is basically a war mentality, it has taken the place of religion;´

Non-Stop Distraction > ´We are constantly bombarded with information, this diverts us from thinking, so our brain will absorb anything that we are exposed to. We are consumers, passively absorbing information. The opposite of this is delight in being alone and the discipline of following a deep interest. It takes you away from consumerism and grants control.´

In consequence of, a campaign. The Active Resistance (AR) aims to eradicate the constant stream of propaganda presented to us everyday. It encourages free thinking, through the exploration of culture and personal growth. Vivienne Westwood heads the campaign. Through following the Active Resistance manifesto, the individual should become resistant to propaganda. About it, she said: ´The most important thing about the manifesto is that it is a practice. If you follow your life will change. In the pursuit of culture you will start to think. If you change your life, you change the world.´

Here´s its fundamental content:

´I make the great claim for my manifesto, that it penetrates to the root of the human predicament and offers the underlying solution. We have a choice: to become more cultivated, and therefore more human - or by not choosing, to be the destructive and self-destroying animal, the victim of our own cleverness (to be or not to be).

We shall begin with a search for art, show that art gives culture and that culture is the antidote to propaganda.

Dear Friends, we all love art and some of you claim to be artists. Without judges there is no art. She only exists when we know her. Does she exist? The answer to this question is of vital importance because if Art is alive the world will change. No art, no progress.

We must find out; go in search of her - But wait. Who is this with fire-cracking smouldering pigtails, gold teeth and a brace of flintlocks in his belt? He is a pirate. And what does his T-shirt say? I love crap. (Pirate hands Vivienne Westwood an Hawaiian garland of plastic flowers.)

Pirate: ´Leave everything to me. I plunder for you. Stick with me and you might get a share of the bounty. My name is Progress.´

Active Resitance: ´But you have stolen imagination. There is hardly anyone left now who believes in a better world. What is the future of unlimited profit in a finite world?´

Pirate Progress: ´I like you artistic lot. But, trust me or not - I'll take you with me if I go down. We'll all burn together.´ (Film clip, close up: the pigtails burst into flames and with a ´Ha-haagh!´ the pirate disappears in a pall of smoke followed by black night.)´

(Still dark) He is not Progress. He must have stolen the name. (The defiant face of Pirate Progress appears and disappears like the Cheshire Cat. Light returns). True progress, as the Greeks thought of it is without limit. How can things get better and better if there is a limit?

Beautiful Slavegirl: ´Everything must have an end. And to progress or advance in any way you must know where you are going. An end cannot be something you choose for the sake of something else. For example, money is not an end but a means to an end. And for this reason, I shall be set free.´

Alice: ´She was your mirror. Her love showed you Yourself. She believed in you.´

Active Resistance: ´A work of art may show us our self - who we are and our place in the world. It is a mirror which imitates life.´

Alice: ´Those round convex mirrors are very good - you see a lot, but concentrated down - you see big and small at the same time - you need to fit all the things into a microcosm but it has to reflect as well,´ and turning to the Art Lovers, ´I was just explaining this to Pinocchio´.

Pinocchio: ´Now that I have become a boy, I want to be a freedom-fighter.´

Active Resistance: ´Action! Nothing is possible without art. Come with us. To find if Art is alive, we must first know who she is. To the Lyceum!´

Alice - to Pinocchio: ´We are going to see Aristotle. His analysis of Greek tragedy is such an objective breakdown that it serves to define art in general and in all its forms - what it is and what it isn't, then finding themselves alone, ´We must go back and find the others´.

Pinocchio: ´There's a bloke here who lives in a barrel.´

Diogenes: ´I shit and wank in front of people in the street like a dog: I am the Cynic. The Great Alexander made a point of coming to see me and asked if he could do me a favour. Nobody's better than me. I told him to step out of my light. I am famous because I've got the balls to do what I want. And I don't want much.´

Pinocchio: ´Cool, I've found art! I could be Diogenes II. I'll call myself a piss artist and make lots of money.´

Active Resistance: ´Come back children. Alice we're waiting for you to introduce us to Aristotle. And Pinocchio, you're just being silly. Though Diogenes is obsessed by himself, he doesn't believe in anything, let alone himself. That's why he's a cynic. This self-promotion, and doing what you want is a sham philosophy of life. No, no, it's not self-indulgence but self-discipline that makes the individual. And you, especially, need self-discipline if you're going to be a freedom-fighter.´

Pinocchio: ´You are right. Diogenes seemed kind of happy, but he's a poser. Too boring, I couldn't keep it up. Ha, ha, keep it up! I could sell canned sperm. Great marketing opportunities.´

Alice (sarcastic): ´Oh how lewd!´

Aristotle, a Greek gentleman, impeccably dressed, - in contrast to Diogenes - stands centre stage. Alice moves to his side.

Alice: ´Aristotle refers to the writer of tragedy as 'the poet'. Greek tragedy was expressed in verse but this is not the important thing. What defines the poet is that he is an imitator - just like a painter or any other maker of images. If a historian were to write up his whole history in verse this would not make him a poet; for he tells of things that have happened in real life and this is not imitation. Imitation is the work of the imagination. The poet's role is to tell of things that might happen, things that are possible. Aristotle adds that the poet may imitate life not as it is, but as it ought to be.´

Alice: ´Dear Aristotle thank you for stating the links between character, action and fortune. I remember you once said that character is a person's habit of moral choice. But please now tell us what you mean when you describe a work of imitation - in this case tragedy - as 'the Whole'.

Aristotle: ´The events which are the parts of the plot must be so organised that if any of them is displaced or taken away, the whole will be shaken and put out of joint; for if the presence or absence of a thing makes no discernible difference, that thing is not part of the whole.´ (Aristotle retires)

Active Resistance: ´One can begin to grasp something of the obsession people have had with the idea of the circle as a perfect form. A work of art then, is an imitation reduced to its essentials, thereby forming a whole - as in a microcosm.´

Thus art gives objectivity - a perspective, an overview. We define objectivity as seeing things as they are.

Real life is not objective - we can never get the complete picture. It is chaotic and continuous - a jumble of particulars in which events are engulfed in the flux of circumstance. How can the artist be objective when he, himself is part of the change? He needs a fixed fact to stand on - a standard, a measure, a model.

Alice: ´Tell me all about it! If there is nothing fixed in the world then you find yourself in Wonderland where everything changes - including yourself. - And you try to play a game of croquet with a flamingo for a mallet and the ball is a hedgehog who runs away.'

Active Resistance: ´We do have a fixed standard - timeless, universal, recognizable. We refer to it as Representative Human Nature (RHN). It is the key to this manifesto:

You or I - as individuals - we change. But there is something typical about us which does not change. When we say, 'Man is the measure of all things', we mean the unchanging part: Man, both in his general nature and according to his various types: this is RHN.´

Aristotle takes this for granted when he says: ´In accordance with their character men are of such and such a quality ... it is for the sake of their actions that the actors take on the characters they have.´ He also says that the best characters in a play are people with whom we can empathise - 'someone like ourselves'.

We are not saying that art has to be confined to the direct portrayal of human beings: We do say that art must be representational - for it is in imitation that objectivity lies. In practice, through his medium of RHN the artist gains direct imaginative insight into the general nature of things; his view extends from the model.

And abstract art? An abstract that represents no object! And revels in subjectivity. Academic, it's all in the mind - the painter's mind. Unfortunately we are not all mind readers, and the work gives us no clue. He may think he's discovered the secret of the universe! He will take it to his grave. There is no common ground on which artist and art lover can come together, because there is no objectivity - no control of the imagination.´

Alice: ´Oh hello, Mr. White Rabbit! Please stop a moment! The artist has just produced a giant hole in the wall. Perhaps he thought it was a 'Whole'. I'm sure you have an interesting observation on holes.´

White Rabbit: 'Negative,' (rushing off).

Artist's Agent: 'Superb intellectual irony. Right on!'

Mad Hatter: ´What do you mean, we're not mind readers? We've all got a hole in the head and we can fill it with whatever 'Whole' we want.´ (changes price-tag on hat from 10/6d to £10m)

Pinocchio: ´I'm going to be a real painter and a freedom fighter. I've been drawing in secret. To see the world as it ought to be - that can't be bad for a freedom-fighter. Hard work though.´

Talking Cricket: ´Pinocchio, you know that there are two sides to people, the donkey and the boy - the self who wants to live in Toyland versus the self who wants to grow up. It is the inner struggle between doing what you want and being true to your Best Self, that humanises a puppet.´

Pinocchio: ´Dear little Cricket, I still get around - have a laugh! But, yeah this inner voice is always having a go, 'Pinocchio, don't be an arsehole! I am your human genius. Listen to me!'

Active Resistance: ´Pinocchio, the whole future of art is at stake and depends on you and others controlling your imagination and listening to your best self - your human genius.´

Imagination is the driving force in human nature. But it is likely to run wild and escape into the chaos of endless desire, unfulfilled longing and alienation.

Active Resistance: ´The way we control the imagination is through the imagination itself - or rather, through its 'best self' - the ethical part.´

The Ethical Imagination is a power of control, an inner check, which prefers to see things as they are. It questions art: is it probable? –is it true to life? - could it be otherwise?

To the great artist the ethical imagination is absolute, he never ceases to explore and cultivate it. To the art lover, we possess it in differing degrees, all may cultivate it. It is intuitive, you get at the truth through insight and you get better at it with practice, through comparison - between works of art and with real life. You need the stamina of a lifetime.

In general: the true artist is always true to his art; the impostor is self-conscious, demonstrating his idea, projecting his theory, his ego, and e.g. the figures of the painter are not borrowed ideas who demonstrate themselves talking, dying, dreaming - they do it. They are of themselves and they LIVE! - and the flowers are not showing us how pretty they are, or how weird - they are what they are - Etc.! No invention for the sake of invention! Invention must serve the purpose of art.

Art is alive to the extent that we control our imagination; we miss everything if we let it run wild. The aim of art is objectivity - she comes to life when we are objective - when we see her as she is. Without judges there is no art.

Neither is there culture, - for art gives culture - because objectivity in art is a centralising and unifying experience:

1. The artist, taking RHN as his model, presents an imitation of life. We aspire to the image. The image may be beautiful or ugly. We see our human face and we ask - could it be otherwise?

2. Thus RHN is the authority on which culture rests. Culture must rest on something abiding, an authority, a belief. But our authority is not the dogma of outer authority (no need for God to supply social cement or fill the spiritual vacuum) but the authority of a consensus - of shared experience.

3. Through culture we are moving towards a centre which is infinite. It is more human, and alive and open to improvement, because it is dependent on the private judgement of every one of us - which is our third factor, the inner check - the ethical imagination.

We define culture as: The exploration and cultivation of humanity through art.

Culture will overcome Propaganda, the nature of Propaganda. In the pursuit of art we become impervious to Propaganda.

We discover Progress.

Through art we see the future. It holds up a mirror of our human potential; - or as victims of our mere cleverness we will remain the destructive animal.

End of the journey.´

P A R T 2

O.M. joins these perspectives, under a psychedelic cloak.

I believe that the sense that all amalgamates in the inventive Melgacian conception is:

If we allow ourselves to undergo from these evils (accordingly Huxley), one way or another (sensorially, emotionally, psychically, intellectually plus socially, politically, ´citizenshiply´ etc or yet literally), we´ll be brought to suffer this (contagious) Werther (accordingly Goethe) effect.

ARPsychedelic Project:

A c t i v e
R e s i s t a n t
P s y c h e l e l i c
P r o j e c t

Seminally embracing AR (accordingly Westwood) contextualization, Otacílio takes an extrapolative course and, which is also a link with Aldous, adds Psychedelia (accordingly Melgaço).

There are two immediate connotations for this particular and unexpected insertion:

In my understanding, a critique of stereotypy:

Psychedelia is a name given to the subculture of people, originating in the 1960s, who often use psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline (found in peyote) and psilocybin (found in some mushrooms). The term is also used to describe a style of psychedelic artwork and psychedelic music. Psychedelic art and music typically try to recreate or reflect the experience of altered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highly distorted and surreal visuals, bright colors and full spectrums and animation (including cartoons) to evoke and convey to a viewer or listener the artist's experience while using such drugs, or to enhance the experience of a user of these drugs. Psychedelic music uses distorted electric guitar, Indian music elements such as the sitar, electronic effects, sound effects and reverberation, and elaborate studio effects, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to another.

In short, it would be a metaphor that O.M. chose for a pejorative, anesthetizing aspect that would contribute to a disconnection from what really should be elaborated as a process of awareness of the necessary ´active resistance´. In this way, psychedelia would be, although aesthetically his progenies sound magnificently, an irony of Otacílio and an alert.

There´s also the opposite, which only highlights the Melgacian polysemy and its instigating paradoxes:

The term ´psychedelic´ is derived from the Ancient Greek words psychē (ψυχή, ´soul´) and dēloun (δηλοῦν, ´to make visible, to
reveal´), translating to ´soul-revealing´.

A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters. Psychedelic states are an array of experiences including changes of perception such as hallucinations, synesthesia, altered states of awareness or focused consciousness, variation in thought patterns, trance or hypnotic states, mystical states, and other mind alterations. These processes can lead some people to experience changes in mental operation defining their self-identity (whether in momentary acuity or chronic development) different enough from their previous normal state that it can excite feelings of newly formed understanding such as revelation, enlightenment etc.

In this purport, O.M. stands side by side with the British Dame in terms of the need for a percipient commitment of the Artist in this process (anti-organised lying + anti-nationalistic idolatry + anti-non-stop distraction), but he enchantingly adds a metaphysical dimension.

In its always clear remarks, pronounced Oliver Sacks: ´To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings. We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.´

´Never forget:
we walk on hell,
gazing at flowers.´ (Kobayashi Issa)

The prism of transcendence brought by Mr. Melgaço in his ´WERTHER EFFECT - ARPsychedelic Project´ does not make the hell cease to exist under our sometimes weary feet. Notwithstanding he warns about the following possibility: it depends on us that there are more landscaped flowers around the world and so, embellishing our eyes (and, through the pollen of its compositions: ears), help us to cross hell without allowing us to morph ourselves into it." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

&

I - Psychedelic states may be elicited by various techniques, such as meditation, sensory stimulation or deprivation, and most commonly by the use of psychedelic substances. When these psychoactive substances are used for religious, shamanic, or spiritual purposes, they are termed entheogens. Respecting the rituality but far from any apology for drug use (what is under discussion here is not this), the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist adopted the term as a figure of speech;

II - The publicized suicide serves as a trigger, in the absence of protective factors, for the next suicide by a susceptible or suggestible person. This is referred to as suicide contagion. They occasionally spread through a school system, through a community, or in terms of a celebrity suicide wave, nationally. This is called a suicide cluster. Suicide clusters are caused by the social learning of suicide-related behaviors, or "copycat suicides". Point clusters are clusters of suicides in both time and space, and have been linked to direct social learning from nearby individuals. Mass clusters are clusters of suicides in time but not space, and have been linked to the broadcasting of information concerning celebrity suicides via the mass media. To prevent this type of suicide, it is customary in some countries for the media to discourage suicide reports except in special cases. With regard to the adaptation made by O.M. of this terminology, it´s worth emphasizing that it is essentially of a metaphorical nature;

III - Caio Campbell´s Note:

"Another fruit of Westwood's mind, NINSDOL ´is an acronym for Nationalist Idolatry, Non-Stop Distraction and Organised Lying and is treated as though it´s a pharmaceutical brand name for a pill. One a day from birth, Your free pill and Ninsdol every day ... are the catchphrases used to promote its supposed use and its function is to control the minds of the population who will then willingly follow the ruling clique’s hidden agenda.´ The analogy with the daily intake of a pill is still effectual and was already quite interesting since its utilization in Huxley's literature.

In a spreading documentary (directed by Jean-Marie and Letmiya Sztaltryd) about Vivienne, we can see - in one of the scenes - that she tries ´to help Prince Charles save the Amazon rainforest.´ Otacílio Melgaço, as a Brazilian, knows that Mrs. Westwood does it with the best of intentions. But he also knows that´s a utopian, really naive facet of her militancy. This in no way interferes with the value of many of her attitudes, which are indeed welcomed to the point that they have become part of the references of this Project. [The exotic Prince of Wales never had and will not have the wingspan of being the ´savior´ of the Amazon because the context surrounding this issue is much more complex than that. His initiatives are welcome too but only a crumb on the conjuncture in question. It´s far beyond his reach. Those who believe in it - in a ´miraculous salvation´ - (at least those cited here, through ignorance and misinformation and not bad faith - despite the fact that, not at all ingenue, this is good for personal marketing and therefore also for the business of such people) still have some vestige of colonialist vision and live a reality quite distant from, for example, what was called the Third World. ´Unhappy the nation that needs heroes´, Brecht's phrase. Heroes, rescuers, messiahs, maybe even, in the 21st century, kings or queens.] But again, that´s not what is at stake here.

Through her campaign and manifesto, the first lady of English fashion brought questions to the role of the artist nowadays, tending to get lost in an area of comfort and mere egotism. Merging this with a realization of how much the said Propaganda (already reasonably deepened above) can be a lobotomizing narcotic, is of great contribution. Undoubtedly any movement that requires and causes changes in the status quo must start from a process of awareness. And this means, among other things, we´re no longer prone to manipulations so well defined by the triad Organized Lying, Nationalistic Idolatry and Non-Stop Distraction. From my point of view, the three tracks on the Melgacian album are compelling sound representations of such awakening. As demonstrations of how an artist should not become an onanist in an ivory tower (and neither a titerist of his audience); as manners of being propositive through constructive (and not least fascinating) cultural expressions and actions."

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

\|/

Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.