00:00:00.000One of the great examples you guys brought up, and I highlighted this in my post, was the story.
00:00:05.980And I think it's Ovid's Metamorphosis, because there's another version of it, too.
00:00:09.820But I think you guys particularly did the one with Ovid with Apollo and Pan.
00:00:15.200And this kind of and I don't know whose whose line that was where you said it's equivalent of someone today comparing Kanye to Mozart.
00:00:23.840and like that's that's that's Midas saying oh I think Pan is better than Apollo fucking the god
00:00:30.480of music and I think that was what it was a brilliant page of your book dude like it was
00:00:36.000well I think it gets at the heart of what you're trying to say credit for that one there you go
00:00:40.820nice well I think that line in particular was probably Richard though okay nice nice I think
00:00:46.860there might even be something to the fact that pan who's a sort of bucolic dionysus you know
00:00:54.140and of course many similarities they're both the horn yeah yeah and i think playing a wind
00:01:00.420instrument versus a stringed instrument i think is also significant that the stringed instrument
00:01:06.740is offering that precise tone and the the wind instrument might be more murky and uh sort of
00:01:15.860out of tune but maybe in a um attractive way and i think that's a sort of embedded concept in there
00:01:23.940as well is that yes yeah there's no doubt that music stirs the emotions there there's a sort
00:01:30.580of in a nietzschean sense there's a dionysian aspect to beethoven even this person that now
00:01:36.340most people think of as you know elevator music or or you know snobby elitist music there's still
00:01:42.340he's pulling at your emotions sentimentality even some aggressions pomp you know and in his
00:01:50.100you know third napoleonic symphony and etc etc uh but there also is reason and mathematics even i
00:01:59.940mean music is math you know in in so many ways and and i think there's you know one maybe problem
00:02:07.220with nietzsche is that direct association of dionysus is a god of music and apollo is a god
00:02:15.220of sculpture ultimately of the plastic arts and i we obviously see where he's coming from and he's
00:02:21.540making a really interesting distinction in that book but uh apollo is also a god of music right
00:02:28.260And I, you know, there is something to the rhythmic quality of, you know, even music as sort of, I don't know, scatological is like the insane clown posse.
00:02:45.000I'm trying to imagine the worst music. Even that is sort of attractive, kind of compelling, charming, even in this just the kind of like utter mass stupidity of like moving to the rhythm and everyone's together and everyone's sort of drunk or drug addled.
00:03:06.080there is something compelling about that i i will admit um but you know it's it's apollo who sort of
00:03:12.980gets both you know the the music is rational the music is speaking a particular language
00:03:21.780you know in the melody you know you can hear a melody and it's sort of it's almost like it's
00:03:27.100speak it's it's like a sentence you know it's it's telling you something and um and then combining
00:03:33.440the rhythmic aspects of what we would call dionysian music i think that's the the way in which
00:03:39.440uh apollo is a god of music too and i i was just imagining some like post-modern theorist or
00:03:46.820something you know it's like oh well you know when you really think about it uh kanye west is uh
00:03:51.440really the equal of uh mozart you know comparing uh you know this album with uh don giovanni you
00:03:57.740know kanye comes out on top it's very complicated if you see it yeah it's just this like rational
00:04:03.100rationalization of something that's just obviously stupid and uh no no offense to kanye fans out
00:04:10.100there but i guess i am trying to offend them in fact but that's definitely my point and it's also
00:04:16.580it's also a spectrum so we can say a music is more apollonian as opposed to right and another music
00:04:23.460is more dionesian whereas nothing represents something perfectly apollonian and nothing
00:04:28.840represents something perfectly dynasian yeah and even the the ninth symphony you know where the
00:04:35.180you the symphony itself breaks out into song you know in the in the final movement and i and and
00:04:42.480it's very interesting it's a schiller text and it is liberal in a way that uh it it not liberal in
00:04:51.240the way that we think of that word now it's you know all the mention verd and bruder we're all
00:04:55.560going to be one in a democratic order um i mean it's revolutionary in its context and in its time
00:05:02.700uh but it there is that sort of sense of like the the the music which is very aggressive you know
00:05:10.300you know this kind of thing and then it sort of breaks out into something that is clear and
00:05:18.140rational and specific even you know it it's sort of like apollonian arising from the dionysian
00:05:25.540And I think, you know, the image of Beethoven probably had a great effect on Nietzsche's schema, where the Apollonian or the protagonist arises from the choir, the chorus, you know, the protagonist, you know, the the the individualization kind of comes out of the mass drunken horde that is Dionysus.
00:05:49.120well i mean the other the other way to look at this richard too is that you could make the
00:05:54.660argument that music and even all forms of art are in some way a kind of intoxication
00:06:00.780right in this way kind of dionysian but then you you consider well what how can we make them
00:06:09.260more apollonian or make them healthier right so especially if humans require art yeah so i guess
00:06:16.080that's the one way of looking at it i mean we might even say that religion art and music are
00:06:20.420these kind of necessary evils but people desire them right and if we're not making them if we're
00:06:26.920not controlling them then someone else will make them and control them right exactly i mean if you
00:06:33.660believe that there's you know in terms of like censorship if if you believe that there's such
00:06:37.920a thing as a good book which everyone more or less believes i think you have that implies the
00:06:43.700existence of a bad book too and it's not like you know i love the arts or something that's a
00:06:50.640meaningless statement you don't love all of it some of it actually is degenerate to be frank
00:06:57.220some of it's terrible some of it's insulting in fact some of it's merely mediocre like
00:07:03.240if you know if i were to compose a song it would be you know wouldn't be degenerate it would just
00:07:09.060suck basically you know uh because i i don't have those talents but um but you know we can
00:07:16.020if if we we want good art and we we sort of recognize like the power of it and the power
00:07:23.860of it to harm society in fact and and there's a lot of a lot of that but it it's not you know
00:07:32.660you can't just be simply i'm like you know i'm i love music i love all music i'm always suspicious
00:07:37.860when people say that what kind of music do you like oh i like all music what you like all
00:07:42.580zoomers are zoomers are particularly guilty of saying i like all genres because you know
00:07:48.660streaming culture really did this to us where it's like oh i kind of like this vibe i like this vibe
00:07:55.140i don't really i'm just all vibes you know you don't really have a beat that you stick to um
00:08:01.240i i just wanted to mention uh going back to speaking of music i think of like led zeppelin
00:08:07.820cashmere um like when they bring in the orchestral into the heavier stuff you kind of see this
00:08:14.680dynamic of the dionysian um the apollonian uh and it really adds something uh when it's like
00:08:21.980in an amphitheater with orchestra um and then even going back to uh what mark was talking about
00:08:29.480earlier uh i guess you can call it like a friend enemy cognate between the anglos and the americans
00:08:36.060um if you want to call it i don't know if that quite works but you know it makes me think of
00:08:41.240the british invasion of how you know you have the rolling stones singing with the southern twang
00:08:47.660um aping american culture um and this is where you see them really eclipse the american uh or roman
00:08:56.520uh dialectic so they're kind of honing off of each other um and then you there you really see
00:09:03.580punk um break onto the scene in england um and i think that's an interesting uh interplay going on
00:09:12.460there almost like my point but the about the greeks exporting their culture and just kind of
00:09:17.660be like they are like the modern greeks the english in a way yes yeah even punk or and i
00:09:24.100think nirvana was was doing something something similar in in the grunge era but it's it's
00:09:30.940ultimately like this not this active nihilism that's that's bringing music to an end in the
00:09:37.960sense that you know i mentioned before beethoven's ninth symphony you have all of this music that
00:09:42.740that's that's expressing something but you're not quite you know but but it's musical it's
00:09:47.660inherently abstract you're not quite sure what it means and then it breaks out into song all
00:09:52.800mentioned verid and bruder we're all going to be brothers in this new democratic europe that
00:09:58.700liberals were imagining at the time and and that was a revolutionary opinion at the time it's a
00:10:03.860it's a lame opinion in 2026 it's a revolutionary opinion in the early 19th century and uh but it's
00:10:11.500almost like something different was happening with punk and with nirvana where you're you're
00:10:17.500and even wagner actually you're you're breaking down the structure of music to noise to a point
00:10:25.680where you're you're almost ending music you know it becomes a scream or you smash your instruments
00:10:32.320at the end of the concert you you break down tonality it's almost like you're bringing
00:10:37.120dionys it's like the euripides play where you know dionysus comes and there's some orgies and
00:10:44.200fun and frolicking it and they wake up in they wake up out of a trance exactly they wake up
00:10:50.640the trance is over they're like oh we just killed pentheus our prince yeah agave killed his her own
00:10:57.020they're all waking up with blood on their hands realizing oh what we thought was a revolutionary
00:11:01.160idea oh shit we fucked up we just ruined our entire culture that's kind of like exactly yeah
00:11:07.500yeah it's funny that same nietzsche bashes euripides throughout the birth of tragedy i i
00:11:13.440think euripides is one of the more profound playwrights actually in like really showing
00:11:19.680what can't like he's showing that like dark energy at the heart of the dionysian experience
00:11:26.640and this is what it ends up in it ends up in a mother with blood on her hands you're shocked and
00:11:34.420i mean it just the the most the most shocking ending in all of you know theater you know it
00:11:42.020has never been surpassed actually and uh i think that his ability to to show that but yeah i mean
00:11:48.780Real quick, and I'll let Mark jump in as well, but what I was getting at a little bit earlier, there's points in Das Rheingold, the prelude to Wagner's Ring, where you have that repetitive rhythm of...
00:12:08.280And you end up with these slaves in Nibelheim screaming.
00:12:14.580and and actually on the the recording that i i like the um schultz recording it's it's like
00:12:21.360ah you know they they really get into it and again it's it's almost like that that dionysian
00:12:29.600impulse like emerging into just like terror or or pain anti-music the scream and you know i and i
00:12:40.060think that's brilliant and you know uh british punk and nirvana are not on the level of wagner
00:12:46.380of course but in terms of like what they're getting at ideologically so to speak it is just
00:12:55.520as as profound it's like music you know music can be overproduced the melodies can be amazing
00:13:02.680exotic tones and all this kind of stuff but you know at the end of the day at the end at the heart
00:13:08.360of it is this scream and i yeah um it's great stuff cobain uh fascinating guy if not the most
00:13:19.540talented musician very dynation yeah you see that in like an idea also of the dynation is the is
00:13:29.160the dismemberment right uh the tearing apart uh the mayonnaise tearing you know orpheus apart
00:13:35.920um yeah and but we so you see that in art in other movements so you talk about wagner but
00:13:43.260then this pre-sages are is concurrent i guess right what is the time jazz is also appearing
00:13:49.580and jazz is also another like destruction of form essentially right jazz destruction of form
00:13:56.220and um it it no longer has the form of classical music it becomes improvisational
00:14:02.680um and then you also have uh the same thing happens in the visual arts with um modern art
00:14:09.260right so impressionism seems like it's also impressionism is like sort of the first stage
00:14:15.540of this sort of dissolution of this um falling apart or this breaking down essentially and then
00:14:22.440you have picasso and then you have modern art and uh it's also dionysian it's also a dismemberment
00:14:28.540it's also a destruction essentially of the form and it's it just seems like it's kind of can't go
00:14:33.880anywhere else it has to like destroy itself that's to sort of eat itself right that's another
00:14:39.160longer interesting it's become something that's not interesting so it has to be
00:14:43.180become an enemy of itself ultimately that might be another distinction between
00:14:48.420apollonian dionysian art in general is the the dionysian art whether it's music or whatever
00:14:55.780films is counter-cultural it's trying to dismantle some sort of norm in society some sort of
00:15:02.620tradition and rip it apart and kill it murder it um whereas the apollonian is more of carrying on
00:15:09.200the tradition that's sacred to whatever civilization or or just some family or something i don't know
00:15:16.100uh the but one of them is destroying one of them's building upon one of them is like
00:15:21.460yeah creating other ones killing it's kind of nowhere and it's like sort of a weird thing i
00:15:27.620noticed i think literally me or uh movies like travis bickle like travis bickle or the joker
00:15:36.160you know the ones that the dr are so hypnotized by these edits um or fight club you know all those
00:15:43.280that come to mind that is fundamentally dionysian um whereas something apollonian would be like
00:15:48.800uh the latest mission impossible or something or you know something truly epic
00:15:53.680yeah well i guess i would ask this question and maybe directed at mark i mean one criticism
00:16:03.160of the work that of myth to power that might even hold some water is you know you guys are
00:16:12.060saying that basically everything is dionesean or everything is jewish or proto-jewish like they
00:16:17.760they did all art and there there's a hundred examples of gem and there's a few examples of
00:16:26.040aim and i think that that might you know again i might be fair uh criticism but i guess maybe a
00:16:35.180question i mean he just says something like everything is dying dynasty spread at some point
00:16:40.080yeah um maybe maybe but real quick maybe a maybe a question would be like
00:16:45.700maybe is art can art be civilizational defining or or does that does art like that
00:16:56.000become boring and fuddy-duddy you know is is an Apollonian art you know one of these classical
00:17:04.340music concerts where everyone dresses up and barely staying awake while listening to you know
00:17:11.040a handle overture for the umpteenth time you know is that almost is there some it does art have to
00:17:18.080be edgy and anti-civilizational to be relevant i mean i don't think it will here's the thing i'll
00:17:26.220answer the question yeah i don't think that you have to be anti-civilizational to be edgy i think
00:17:32.460you can be pro-civilizational and very edgy right especially now yeah so i think that there's
00:17:37.940opportunities for people to create apollonian art now where we live in this sort of dionesian
00:17:43.720decadence and all in most art is effectively dionesian uh you can distinguish yourselves
00:17:52.800by making apollonian art and that that that becomes subversive i mean nietzsche has this
00:17:58.900idea that the apollonian right arises from the dionysian and vice versa you know from
00:18:04.320the apollonian comes to the dionysian like cycles yeah yeah