When I first heard AttQM I used to think it was messy and weird in a slightly good but also not good kind of way, but today it's like this emotionally skeletal state of consciousness kind of...you know...that.

Okay so here's a thing I want to know. How many people listen to music with total concentration in order to get something approaching inner eye visions? Has anyone else on here done this or something like it without psychedelics, or am I really just a lunatic in the wilderness on this score? Does anyone here experience this as well? This is not a roundabout way of bragging, I really want to know if I am alone here. Because if I am I may have to write a big post on the psychonautics of music listening.

Oh yes. Plenty of music does that to me if I'm in the right state of mind and there is no distracting stimuli. Incredible synesthetic experiences.

Please do this.

I've experienced this on rare occasions. Please do make a post about it, I'd be interested in reading it. But please include line breaks.

What do you mean by inner eye visions? The most recent music I've experienced with full and total concentration was a lot of Agalloch's music. I actually find there is a relatively narrow spectrum of music that I can totally focus on because there is a limited spectrum of music that can engage me totally emotionally and intellectually.

Inner eye visions are not like actually seeing things, but basically seeing things anyway. Not full on hallucinations. But there is a distinct sense of imaginary visuals. If you close your eyes they can become very detailed and colorful, but at the same time invisible. It's like a sense more than a perception. Third eye sort of stuff. (So yes, it has something to do with mysticism I guess, but I happened upon this whole thing without consulting any tradition. I was just really high and thought I was getting a drug effect. Now I realize I can get to the same place with nothing more than total concentration and openness).

It doesn't really have anything to do with whether the music is engaging or not. To experience these things you have to get to the point where you are totally engaged by default. It's like certain forms of meditation where you quiet the noisiness of your mind, close your eyes, and totally concentrate on the small ambient noises in your room, the smallest feeling in your body, the feeling of your breath. You go to the mind behind the usual conscious mind, the mind that watches the usual conscious mind. At first it's hard because it's mad boring, but it's like you are training your brain muscle to engage with anything. Once you can do that with ease, it doesn't matter whether the music engages you or not. You are in a state of complete openness and you see the music for what it fully is, bad or good.

Tool fan I take it

Interesting. I guess what I was saying is there is only certain music I can do this with (which probably indicates that I'm not usually in this state) because of how my mind wanders. However, I'd say in my latest listens to Agalloch's work I did experience something close to this. I wish I could train my mind better in this it just gets so quickly pulled around a lot of the time. That's why intellectually engaging music is the easiest for me to do this with because it absorbs my whole mind.

Extremely rarely. Once while listening to a Ben Frost album I had a very vivid sensation that I was traveling through a village, buildings were mostly tipis, and I could sense wolves on the outskirts though I could not see them (there were wolf barks in the music). At the same time I felt like my head was being squeezed—it wasn't uncomfortable but it would have been had someone actually been squeezing my head the way it felt like someone was. There have been other occasions that I remember less well.

would that be ben frost's by the throat?

i've experienced this with very select artists - slowdive, tim hecker, this heat are the ones that come to mind. completely otherworldly experiences, beyond judgment, beyond flaw, nothing else to compare the feeling to. i wouldnt know how to write about it tbh.

Yes

is anyone else here into space age pop?

it's some of the most creative and optimistic kind of music made during its time and i was wondering if anyone else could point me to some good compilations

Not directly following from my previous post but certainly related to it and only because I couldn't find a lyrics thread to post in, I would like to say how much I love this verse from I Am Trying to Break Your Heart:



Miscommunication was never put more eloquently.