AEWCH 270: BEN CHASNY (SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE) / HOW DOES MUSIC BECOME MEANING?

Against Everyone with Conner Habib

Friends,

How does music become meaningful? How does it become meaning? And what can we learn about reality from music without reducing music to its function?

Rudolf Steiner said “The music of the spheres is a reality. As soon as we come into the spiritual world which lies beyond the soul-world, we are in a world which lives altogether in sound and song, in melody and harmony, and harmonies of spoken sound. Out of these inner relationships of sound the human ear is formed. “

I invited guitarist and songwriter BEN CHASNY AKA SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE on the show to discuss all of this. Ben last appeared on the show way back on AEWCH 45 when we talked about Rudolf Steiner and the spiritual aspects of intervals. Well... sort of. Ben's actually been on every episode for quite some time because we recreated the AEWCH theme song (originally co-composed with AEWCH guest, Jeb Havens) together. On this episode, he plays the song live and we discuss writing it together. We talk about the essential aspects of music, if there are any. And we look at the spiritual influencer culture of podcasting that has eroded its credibility over the years.
At the end, Ben plays "The Mission" from the recent Six Organs of Admittance album Time Is Glass, which is, as it turns out, about me and my boyfriend.