Category Archives: Hedonism

The notion of hedonism conjures up images of alcohol-fuelled pool parties rather than bookish old blokes holding theoretical discussions. But this much-maligned philosophy has its roots in ancient Greece and has been defended famously by Enlightenment thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

By making pleasure an end in itself, hedonism was sure to have its ethical opponents. However, traditional objections to the philosophy are ill-founded, argues Trinity College Dublin lecturer Ben Bramble.

At the outset, he says, it is important to understand that hedonism is a theory of well-being not a charter for selfishness. Simply put, hedonism says that your well-being is fully determined by your pleasures and pains; any two people identical in their pleasures and pains would be identical in their levels of well-being.

The major competitor to hedonism, he explains, is desire-fulfilment theory. Desire-fulfilment theory says that what is good for you is fundamentally, not good feelings but, having the sort of life you want.

To see the difference between these theories, ask yourself: Is pleasure good for you because you want it? Or do you want it because you are in some sense responding to the fact that it is good for you? I think it is the latter. Pleasure is good for us, not because we want it, but just because of how it feels. A pleasurable life would be good for us whether we wanted it or not.

Hedonism does not have many public advocates these days. What prompted you to mount a defence of it?

Ben Bramble: I am defending hedonism mainly just because I think it is true.

Like other philosophers, I am interested in getting at truth for its own sake. But I also think that arriving at the right theory of well-being is extremely useful for certain practical matters. How can we know how to live well if we do not know what is good for us all in the first place?

JS Mill famously said it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Do you agree?

A popular criticism of hedonism is that it seems to entail that the life of a pig could be higher in well-being than the life of a normal human, providing that the pig has many intense pleasures of, say, slopping around in the mud, lying in the sun, eating its fill, etc.

Mill argued that hedonism does not entail this. In particular, he argued that there are pleasures that human beings can feel that add more to well-being than any amount of the only pleasures pigs can feel.

What are these higher pleasures? They include pleasures of love, learning, aesthetic appreciation, and so on. I agree with Mill.

Now, you might wonder, how can a hedonist consistently hold this view? Mustnt she say that the best life is simply the one with the most pleasure? The answer, I believe and here I depart from Mill has to do with diversity. Diversity of pleasure matters in and of itself. And there is much greater diversity available, I believe, in the higher pleasures than in mere bodily ones. Bodily pleasures, most of the time, are just more of the same.

The point here, it is important to emphasise, is not that bodily pleasures necessarily get boring or stop being pleasurable - though they often do. It is that purely repeated pleasures - pleasures that bring nothing new to our lives in terms of their quality - are, in and of themselves, a waste of time. This is not to say that bodily pleasures are unimportant.

Even purely repeated bodily pleasures can help us carry on in life, and so can act as a kind of oil for our joints. The point is rather that with only such pleasures, we would be missing out on the richest and most varied pleasures available - and, I would add, some of the most pleasurable.

Acceptance of a refined form of hedonism may be reasonable but is it the best way of approaching ethical matters?

Hedonism, as Ive said, is just a theory of well-being. By itself, then, it has nothing to say about how we should live. Importantly, it does not say we should live so as to maximise our own self-interest-that (false) theory is called egoism.

I think we should combine hedonism with utilitarianism, the theory on which we should live so as to maximise the well-being of all sentient creatures, including non-human animals. Combining these views, we get the appealing conclusion that we should live so as to help all creatures feel good and avoid feeling bad.

Why is this appealing? Every other theory of how we should live is committed to saying that there are at least some occasions when we should choose something that doesnt maximally improve the feelings of sentient beings ie occasions when we should forgo making some particular individual feel better in favour of doing something that makes nobody feel better. That strikes me as highly counterintuitive.

Does your theory of hedonism have broader implications for how we should treat animals?

As I mentioned earlier, I think hedonists should distinguish between mere bodily pleasures and higher pleasures of love, learning, aesthetic appreciation, etc. Bodily pleasures have their place, but higher pleasures have special value.

For this reason, pigs and most other non-human animals, who cannot experience these higher pleasures to the same degree humans can, are cut off from living especially fortunate lives. This is a great shame for pigs, etc.

That said, there are many pleasures,and pains, that non-human animals can feel. This means that they can have lives that can go better or worse for them. So, it is absolutely vital that we take their interests into account.

I think that the way we treat animals today most clearly, in the meat industry is so bad that it is hard to fathom. Meat tastes good, yes. But this benefit to us is infinitesimal when compared to the incredible suffering we inflict on animals to get it. Future generations, I suspect, will look back at us with profound dismay.

ASK A SAGE:

Question: Why is so much public debate unmannerly?

Mary Wollstonecraft replies: Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.

Continued here:

Unthinkable: In defence of hedonism - Irish Times

Evrybodys talking bout Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism

This-ism, that-ism, ism, ism, ism Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon

Brothers George and Charles plus their buddy Noah (Merriam-Webster to you), define the word ism thusly:

While all -isms arent bad, I try to work on the ones in my life that are.

Racism:Ive shared anecdotes about being the target of racism in the past, but never talked about my own. Back in the 1980s I had a friend who worked at Luckys supermarket and I went there on Thanksgiving Day. I saw she was crying so I asked what was wrong. She said a customer had called her a stupid b-word and he was still there in the deli. She pointed him out and I went outside fuming and smoked a cigarette (yes, I smoked then gross). The guy came outside and I flicked my cigarette at him and started yelling and cussing him out (yes, I cussed then, sigh). Now, the guy was a punk, but his Asian race had nothing to do with that, but thats where I shamefully went in insulting him. He hurried to his car and when far enough away, he returned racist taunts. But I, sad to say, started it.

Oakland Raiderism:Also known as Commitment to Excellence-ism, Silver and Blackism, Pride and Poise-ism, whatever you call it, its all good.

Hedonism:When I was younger, I was enamored of The Doors Jim Morrison who was a disciple of Dionysian hedonism. Thankfully, I, unlike Morrison and others, survived that phase and now prefer to experience life with my senses unaltered. In the available light, if you will. Instead of just seeking to entertain myself, caring for others or humanitarianism is what makes me happy. Im always amazed by people who figured that out the easy way.

Able Bodyism:I was on the school newspaper staff at Armijo High School and there was a guy there named Kenton Pfister who was physically disabled and used a motorized wheelchair. The first time I heard him talk in his loud and slurred voice that I could not understand, Im now ashamed to admit that I immediately assumed he not only had a physical disability, but a mental one as well. I was dead wrong. I got to know Kenton and we became friends. There was nothing wrong with his mind. He would dictate his stories and they would be typed up and printed in the newspaper. Once I got to know him, I had no problem understanding his speech and he was bright, sharp and had a crisp sense of humor. That experience taught me a lot about judging people and I continue to work on it.

Antidisestablishmentarianism:When I was in elementary school (yes, I was once a lil braniac) I thought I was cool because I could spell this word. I could never work it into a conversation, though.

Sexism:I wrote a column in January 2016 about women in nontraditional occupations. Denise Marie Torkelsen Lazzara shared about working at Mare Island as a machinist, as a mechanic on a nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers and driving an 18-wheeler, among other jobs. She said she faced sexism numerous times in her working career. I had to confess my own sexism. Denise and I attended Armijo High at the same time (shes a year younger than me) and I didnt know her, but knew who she was. In my memory, I put her in a box as just a frail, blonde (Green) Valley girl. I told her my own blind spot in this area was especially galling since I had my own sort of role-reversal years ago when I was a stay-at-home dad who home-schooled my daughter.

Google-ism: Did you know adamitism means nakedness for religious reasons? Me either. Thanks, Google.

Petism:I like dogs better than cats. Dogs miss you horribly when you leave for five minutes, but cats arent even mentally in the same dimension with you until its Fancy Feasttime. I refuse to work on this ism.

Reach Fairfield writer Tony Wade at [emailprotected].

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Here's a look-see at some of my -isms - Fairfield Daily Republic

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Elite Dance & Theatre has transformed The Picture of Dorian Gray into a combination of movement and drama opening on Friday, March 31, at the North Fourth Theatre.

Dan Belden is Lord Henry Wotton and Alex Harde is Dorian in The Portrait of Dorian Gray. (SOURCE: Two Brunos Photography)

In 1890, Oscar Wilde incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity and beauty into his sole novel.

The story begins with a man painting a picture of the nobleman Gray. When Gray sees the portrait, he breaks down, distraught that his beauty will surely fade while the painting remains youthful. He inadvertently makes a Faustian bargain ensuring that the image decays and ages while he remains young. As Grays portrait allows him to escape the physical ravages of his hedonism, he destroys the lives of those closest to him.

The production opens with the artist Basil at his easel as dancers surrounding him mimic his paint strokes, director Cheri Costales said.

Its an amazing story; Oscar Wilde is just brilliant, Costales said. When I had my kids read literature, I always told them to wait until the last chapter. Dorian Gray has one of those endings.

Lord Henry Wotton goads Gray with his hedonistic philosophy: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life. In living out this ideology, Gray courts the naive actress Sibyl Vane, who commits suicide after he rejects her.

As Gray descends into an opium den, the dancers will perform Oblivion, a surreal trip through the depths of his debauchery, Costales said. On returning home, he notices the portrait bears a subtle sneer of cruelty. Its decay is foretold as he continues his descent into self-indulgence.

Eventually, Gray tries to destroy the painting in a moment of repentance, killing the vestiges of his own conscience.

The cast consists of 30 dancers in costumes resembling Steampunk with a twist, Costales said.

Weve got the top hats and the gloves and the boots, she added. Weve probably got about 100 hats.

The Picture of Dorian Gray has inspired countless TV and movie adaptations. The 1945 film starred George Sanders, Donna Reed and Angela Lansbury. In 2003, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen featured a Dorian Gray character, as did the 2014-2016 Showtime series Penny Dreadful.

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Elite Dance & Theatre presents 'Dorian Gray' - Albuquerque Journal

Samantha Bee turned her attention to small-town journalism on Full Frontal this week, heading to New Jersey to help out an ailing newspaper with a new, more hedonistic subscription plan.

On Wednesdays show, Bee focused on the importance of local news outlets, noting in a stand-up introducing the segment that important recent news stories like the Flint water crisis or Bridgegate began as local news stories. So, to that end, Bee focused in on New Brunswick Today, the New Jersey towns lone local newspaper.

Bee spoke with editor-in-chief Charlie Kratovil, who told the Full Frontal host that just 100 people subscribed to the newspaper. Subscriptions, Kratovil added, are just $5 per month.

That low subscriber number was surprising to Bee, given that Kratovils paper had previously exposing corruption at the New Brunswick Water Utility that covered up water contamination in the town. As Kratovil explained to Bee, the town was rocked last year by a scandal in which one man pled guilty to public corruption.

Without old-timey reporting like Charlies, people in New Brunswick would have no idea that their water was poisoned, Bee said in the segment.

So, to drum up subscriptions, the Full Frontal host spoke with Gabe Zichermann, a gamification expert who recommended the paper pursue hedonism and pleasure to drum up subscriptions because people will always choose the most pleasurable option between a set of given choices.

The answer for New Brunswick Today: Lottery tickets. Specifically, lottery tickets potentially worth $500 that also get buyers a yearlong subscription to the paper.

As Bee notes on the show, that approach increased the papers subscriptions by 400 percent a number that Bee said this week is still growing.

Maybe with a little luck, a sprinkle of civic engagement, and a healthy dose of hedonism, Bee said, local journalism will survive.

New Brunswick Today thanked Bee on social media for her work Thursday, and asked that readers continue to support their coverage.

Published: March 24, 2017 12:56 PM EDT | Updated: March 26, 2017 7:01 AM EDT

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Watch: Samantha Bee lends a hand to New Jersey newspaper with ... - Philly.com (blog)

By Alan Zilberman By Alan Zilberman March 23 at 10:25 AM

Many horror movies are content to make an audience jump, and little else. The best accomplish something more than that.

Raw, from French writer-director Julia Ducournau, is a terrific horror film, one that sets a serious premise cannibalism as a metaphor for sexual desire and follows it, through madness and its tragic consequences, to a grim, strange conclusion. Few films are both genuinely erotic and off-putting enough to inspire the occasional walkout. Raw succeeds at both.

Set in an isolated veterinary school, the story of Raw gets underway with a common trope of films about academic life: a hazing ritual that the entire student body participates in with manic zeal. On the first night, upperclassmen kidnap first-year students from their dorms, coaxing them to drink and dance in their underwear. Everyone seems to tolerate the forced hedonism, including the reserved newcomer Justine (Garance Marillier), who wanders through the crowd until she finds her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf), who plans to show Justine the ropes.

Out of school spirit, Alexia advises her sibling do everything asked of her, including the part where Justine a vegetarian must eat a raw rabbit heart. Reluctantly, Justine swallows, but then something strange happens: She develops a taste for raw flesh. The filets in her dormitory fridge initially satisfy her cravings, but she soon graduates to sampling something more taboo. On the cusp of cannibalism, Justine wants to satisfy her newfound hunger without getting caught, but with all the toothsome classmates at her disposal, its a real challenge to do so without attracting attention.

Ducournaus masterstroke is to conflate Justines incipient cannibalism with more benign growing pains. There are scenes that one will recognize from many college movies: Justine walking in on her roommate (Rabah Nait Oufella) having sex, or Alexia schooling her sister with brutal honesty on how to make herself more attractive. But when Justine starts hooking up with someone, and shes overcome by the need to do more than nibble, Marilliers reaction to her desire looks like a mix of curiosity and fear.

Raw is a constant negotiation of that contradictory mix. Justines cannibalism, the film argues, is a craving like any other, albeit a more exaggerated version of one, not to mention one that comes with its own unique dilemma. How can Justine want to devour the very people to whom she feels an emotional connection? In the tradition of films from Frankenstein onward, Raw recognizes the monster as a tragic figure.

Coupled with the veterinary school setting, the sex-crazed students lend the film a heightened sense of corporeal realism. There is frequent nudity, with sweaty bodies glistening seemingly at every turn, and the characters all handle animals with ease. (One scene features Alexia with her entire arm inside a live cow.) At first, this milieu seems like just another riff on the theme of collegiate experimentation. But the perspective of Raw seen through Justines eyes, in which her classmates are also her dinner menu imbues every conversation, every touch, with an acute unease. Ducournau never opts for the predictable payoff or Hannibal Lecteresque pun: Youre so cute I could eat you up.

Instead, Raw focuses on Marilliers carefully modulated performance, underscored by Ducournaus color palette veering from unflattering yellow interior light to the sumptuous reds of a party scene that acts as a barometer for Justines insatiable hunger. The third act shows us a deepening of Justines yearning, with cannibalism becoming a metaphor for something more than sexual desire.

Raw marks Ducournaus feature debut. Like Lucky McKees criminally underrated 2002 horror debut May, it could signal the arrival of a major talent. Raw never admonishes its antiheroine or recoils in judgment from what she wants. Its command of tone is constant, even in the films darkly droll final moments, during which you may not know whether to laugh or gag.

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Art house horror film 'Raw' is an impressive directorial debut by Julia Ducournau - Washington Post

Most of the music I was listening to 15 years ago rarely hits my headphones these days. Sorry The Smiths, The Donnas, Cypress Hill, The Strokes, Moldy Peaches, and, erm, Fun Lovin Criminals, but Ive moved on. I still love you, but people change. However, there is one notable exception, one record that Ive practically had on repeat ever since it came out. Its an album that was released on March 25, 2002, and to me remains as fresh as it was that day even with that dated shout-out to obsolete search engine AltaVista.

The genius of Original Pirate Material was that it managed to be unlike anything Id ever heard before, yet utterly familiar at the same time. Id grown up listening to US hip-hop, and as much as I loved Eminem and Wu Tang Clan, its kind of hard to relate to stories from the gritty streets of Staten Island and Detroit when youre a schoolgirl from Wood Green. Yet when Mike Skinner fused the two-step garage soundtrack that rang out through the corridors of my secondary school with lyrics not just about stuff I knew, but places Id been, suddenly everything made sense. When I first heard Skinner on Has It Come To This say, My underground train runs from Mile End to Ealing From Brixton to Bounds Green in his Birmingham-via-Brixton twang, I squealed with happiness at the local namedrops. Let it be known that this is the first and likely the only time north London suburban nowhereland Bounds Green ever made it onto a Top 10 album.

23-year-old Mike Skinner received an overwhelmingly well-deserved 9/10 review in NME for his debut and its tales of love, going out, being skint, getting drunk, and eating chips. It wasnt a flashy, fake copy of US hip-hop there was no big pimping, just big drinking. Nothing out of the ordinary happens on the album; Mike picks up his take-away, theres a scuffle here, a bit of weed-smoking there and some standard heartbreak. But it was the first time many young Brits had seen their boozy, smoky way of life hoisted up into the spotlight and turned into art. Even Britpop tried to lace the British youth experience with the glamour of being a rocknroll star, but Mike Skinner had no truck with that. Sometimes life was boring, sometimes you drank too much brandy on holiday, sometimes you had a full English and sometimes you got dumped and it was shit. Mike Skinner wasnt just your mate, he was you. And who could manage to say a line like around here we say birds, not bitches and make it sound like a compliment?

Yet amongst all that normality, there was a definite epicness in play. With its looming bedroom strings and Mikes declaration of being 45th generation Roman opening track Turn The Page was massive in sound and message, taking inspiration from both Russell Crowes Gladiator and DJ Luck and MC Neat in equal measure. The stunning Weak Become Heroes made poetry from partying, setting up the club as a modern day church. Here is where hedonism met global politics, with Mike suggesting that if the worlds leaders all boshed a few pingers thered be no war.

15 years on and The Streets are no more, with Skinner putting the project to bed in 2011, after five albums and god knows how many trashed pairs of Reebok Classics. What a geezer.

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A celebration of The Streets' 'Original Pirate Material' on its 15th birthday - NME.com (blog)

There is an oft-repeated statistic that one in five females on college campuses are victims of sexual assault. That number has been highlighted by former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. The perception among many is that there is a campus rape epidemic in America. In a survey recently highlighted by professor KC Johnson for Minding the Campus, Duke University reported an astounding 40 percent of female undergraduates and 10 percent of males have been victims of sexual assault. This data would mean that each year, a female undergraduate at Duke is 5.5 times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than a resident of St. Louis, which FBI statistics listed as the nations most dangerous city in 2016, declared Johnson. Duke rightly declared the numbers unacceptable.

But can these numbers be true? What may even be more astounding is that 88 percent of females who took the survey say they feel safe on Dukes campus. Digging deeper into the survey may not fully explain this disparity, but it does offer additional insight. Some of it can be explained by a broadening definition of sexual assault. The study too declares that more common locations for assaults are off campus. Some might argue that campuses foster a culture of victim hierarchy, where students are prompted to insert themselves into the prevailing sexual assault narrative.

Colleges, universities, and taxpayers spend considerable amount of money on preventing sexual violence and assault. But how effective are the good intentions? One of the glaring problems is that most campuses navigate hookup culture by emphasizing the necessity of consent, alcohol education, and buddy systems like bystander intervention. All good things, especially if one is going to indulge in party culture. Through education and preventative training initiatives, campuses often normalize this behavior even more, neglecting far greater truths about human relationships and sexual intimacy. Consent plus hedonism ultimately proves unfulfilling and harmful, particularly for many young women.

Consent plus hedonism ultimately proves unfulfilling and harmful, particularly for many young women.

There are now apps on smart phones so presumably strangers mutually consent to their hookup, keeping a record just in case stories are changed. New York and California have passed laws detailing steps you must take to secure acceptable consent on college campuses. As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds likes to ask on his Instapundit weblog, Why are leftist universities such cesspits of sexual violence?

Documentaries like the popular Hunting Ground highlight what many see as an escalating campus rape crisis. While a powerful film and well intentioned in many ways, the documentary errs in putting advocacy ahead of facts by including stories that fell apart under closer examination. From the Duke lacrosse case, North Carolinians and much of the nation know the consequences of false reporting. And because consent is easily blurred or misinterpreted through random hookups, morning regrets often turn into reports that campus judicial officials must sort out. The consequences for the wrongly accused, even if acquitted, can be life-altering.

One only has to familiarize themselves with the accusations hurled against Paul Nungesser by Emma Sulkowicz at Columbia University in 2013. Sulkowicz carried a mattress around school to protest Nungesser being cleared by school officials, but in many ways the entire saga encapsulates the broken campus hookup culture.

Many colleges and universities are extremely proactive to protect students. Some have even wisely considered offering more sex-segregated dorm options. Any sexual assault is always wrong and reporting must be encouraged. There is no doubt that predators do exist and some universities have settled multi-million dollar lawsuits after stifling investigations to protect cash cows like football.

But lost in the debate too is that female college students, per the Department of Justice, are less likely to be a victim of sexual assault compared to their non-college peers. However, when it comes to college campuses, if sexual activity is oriented more toward recreation rather than the sacred, all the good intentions ultimately fall short.

Ray Nothstine is a member of the North State Journals editorial board, separate from the news staff. Unlike other newspapers, the North State Journal does not publish unsigned editorials; the author or authors of every editorial, letter, op-ed, and column is prominently displayed. To submit a letter or op-ed, see our submission guidelines.

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Nothstine: Navigating the campus sexual assault crisis - North State Journal (subscription)

The Youngbloods immortalized Spring Weekend at SUNY-New Paltz in 1970 by putting a shot of the crowd on the back cover of their Rock Festival album. That famous two-day concert also featured performances by Hot Tuna, Jefferson Airplane, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Stone The Crows, Eddie Kirkland, Baby Tate, Larry Johnson and Joe Cockers Mad Dogs & Englishmen (which featured Leon Russell). (Warner Brothers)

Remember the Tripping Fields, that spacious, California-shaped tract of somewhat swampy multipurpose grassland at the southern tip of the SUNY-New Paltz campus, probing into the lower Moriello Orchards? Even my mother, who moved here in 1962 well before the activism/hedonism of the counterculture redesigned her quaint little Huguenot town called them the Tripping Fields. I dont think she knows what tripping means. She probably imagined that it had something to do spring, youth, meadows, daisies and free time. She was right.

Spring Weekends were held there: two-day rock concerts featuring a panoply of surprisingly big names, afforded by the Student Associations mandatory fees and justified by an assumed homogeneity of taste that has since been rightfully redressed. I dont have the data to back this up, but I seem to recall that, at the peak of the Spring Weekend era, the crowds at these concerts were more than double the student population of the college.

In my youth, before my own college years elsewhere, I attended a bunch of Spring Weekends. I remember: mud, mostly, cities of mud; but also hippies packed like salted fish onto a tract of land that was (actually, not kidding) a single long golf hole, with a green, a bunker and a pin. As if in orchestrated cultural counterpoint, along the forested eastern fringe of the Tripping Fields hid the opposite of golf, the exemplary communal village of the long-defunct Environmental Studies Program: some A-frames circled around organic gardens, one high-tech solar house that always seemed to be in progress, a single-residence grotto like an aquarium tank embedded in the side of a hill. I looked for the grotto for years, and couldnt verify its reality until I met a man who claimed to have lived there. Its all gone now.

Just as Spring Weekend attracted thousands of non-students, the Environmental Studies Site, if I recall correctly, had some issues with casually matriculated squatters. This was a different New Paltz, well before the academic rehab that may well have spelled the end for innovative studies and, indeed, for the classic Spring Weekend itself. Perhaps, in the 70s and into the 80s, academic standards were low and the students were high; but in a timeless paradox, lax standards sometimes encourage a kind of imagination and autonomy that high standards can squeeze right out of you.

I didnt actually see a lot of great shows in the tripping fields: the Waitresses, Gary US Bonds, a Pure Prairie League side project and, in one year in the gymnasium, after the field shows had been prohibited, They Might Be Giants, Michelle Shocked and Tribe Called Quest. But the legendary student-run Jedi Productions booked excellent gymnasium and theater rock shows year-round, so there was no shortage of big-name talent passing through.

Many veterans of those days rue the passing of New Paltz as a tour destination. Even though I remain a working rock guitarist, I am no rockist True Believer. Monolithic guitar-rock did not fairly represent the diversity of the SUNY-New Paltz studentry. That SA budget should have been more fairly distributed to a variety of student-initiated programming, and ultimately it was, moving the SA beyond what my friend Mark Aldrich once called the great melting-pot rainbow of white.

So I dont rue the rock, but I do miss the idyll of Spring Weekends. As the licenses of the 60s gave way to the 80s attempt to restore the academic sobriety of the institution, the administration may have grown less comfortable with allowing students that kind of free rein and access to facilities. From the perspective of the Sudbury educational model, Spring Weekends exemplify learning at its very best: students working without adult interference or the need for external validation, initiating and organizing themselves and using real money to make real things happen. From an administrative perspective, it is not hard to understand some reluctance. Rock concerts are chaos unleashed. New Paltzs reputation as a vigorous party school was not an academic asset, and Spring Weekend had become its flagship ritual, when the loonies ran the bin.

Baby-Boomers and vets of the culture wars like to remember an era of free love, pre-HIV, before sex was all second-guessing and actualized Freudian nightmares. Me, I wax nostalgic about the pre-Lyme era of fields and long grasses, the days of hill-rolling and copse-traipsing, gone forever. Spring was long, meadows werent poisoned and everyone loved guitars.

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A remembrance of Spring Weekends past at SUNY-New Paltz - Hudson Valley One

Lays herself on the line Tove Lo at Shepherds Bush Empire in London. Photograph: Burak Cingi/Redferns

Tove Lo is winding up her show when a red bra, launched from a few rows back, lands on the stage. Depositing it on the drum platform, she tersely addresses the fan who lobbed it: I dont wear bras. That much we already knew: 15 minutes earlier, during the boisterous singalong Talking Body, the songs explicit carnality had impelled her to lift her cropped T-shirt just long enough for the crowd to register that she wore nothing underneath, and respond with an intake of breath. Showing her chest has become a regular part of the Swedish singers sets, as both a nod to her home countrys relaxed attitude to bare skin and a flick of the finger to prurience.

The pop-EDM scene in which Lo operates is full of graphic references to sex, but generally stops short of nudity. By contrast, her musical identity is bound up with extreme candour not just saying, but doing. A vagina symbol, seen on the cover of her current album Lady Wood, hangs above the stage and is printed on the drum kit; the entire set leads with hazy, gluey hedonism, starting from the moment she appears before a video backdrop of flames.

Appropriately, the show is topped and tailed by the singles True Disaster and Habits (Stay High). The former coolly claims that she give[s] zero fucks about the consequences of an intense physical attraction; the latter, her 2013 breakthrough hit, reveals that her remedy for heartbreak is drugs, and plenty of them. Lady Wood itself refers to female arousal, and its sparse title track inspires ringing audience participation. I know what people say about you / They say the same about me, sings Tove brightly, smacking a transparent drum with a single drumstick. You give me wood The fans chorus back: Lady wood! Lady wood!

As a way of setting herself apart from the Scandipop rank and file, foregrounding her unfettered appetites works impressively well here. Zara Larsson might be the scenes billion-streams queen and the Eurovision-winning Loreen its sporadically cool chancellor, but Lo is the one who lays herself on the line, and tonight does so in a way that compares most closely with a man the Weeknd. The setlist, from Lady Wood and her debut album Queen of the Clouds, is heavy on brooding minor-chord tracks that call to mind the Weeknds lupine fug: her three-piece band make Not on Drugs burn slowly and stickily; Keep It Simple, which occasions a change into a black PVC leotard, almost generates its own cloud of reefer smoke. And Lo, caught up in her own haze and running her hands over her body, has a similar of-the-night quality.

She absolutely owns her feelings, it should be added. The worst you could say about her is that shes an interesting character. In her own words from the set-closing Cool Girl: Lets not put a label on it / we dont put a label on it.

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Tove Lo review pop's queen of candour bares more than just her ... - The Guardian

"I remember growing up here in New York, going out and having the best nights of my life," recalls queer DJ/producer Joey LaBejia, who was born and raised in the Bronx. "The neighborhoods we would rave in have turned into suburbs, like Kent Avenue in Williamsburg. Going to places, like Death by Audio and Monkey Town, tripping on mushrooms when people were really experimenting with musicthose days were, and still are, so important to me. But they're gone."

Labejia's new EP, Violator, addresses this cultural shift through five tracks created out of frustration with today's NYC club music and culture. Having watched these spaces evolve from "pure hedonism" to ones where clubgoers post about their fun, rather than truly experience it, LaBeija created his EP for the nightlife environment NYC no longer fosters. "I wanted to make music that would make people lose their minds," he said. "I've seen boys giving blowjobs during my DJ sets, and that's the energy I always want to create with musicno fucks given, absolute insanity."

The project's pounding lead single, "XXXCUSE ME," is certainly unabashed, with its searing synths and incessant beatshardstyle-leaning with colorful West Indian understones.Violator'sremaining tracks are equally ruthless, best described by one title in particular, "Mindscrambler." Much like an emergency defibrillator, LaBeija's new music is purposefully electric, preparing to revive NYC's club scene with its aggressive, ear-shattering production.

Sonically, Violatorreferences all the early music that helped shape LaBeija into the DJ he's become today. His mother, who's Puerto Rican and from Harlem, helped inform these early discoveries, from latin house to disco, soul, salsa and merengue. LaBeija's sisters, who were "total '90s R&B girls," played a major role in developing his music taste, as well. All these sounds are referenced throughout Labeija's forthcoming project, tightly packed in one EP to reflect New York's incredible cultural collision.

"Being from the Bronx, it's in your nature to love hip-hop and rap," LaBeija says. "I went to a very small Catholic high school in New Rochelle, where I hung out with the very Italian girls, [who] introduced me to techno and house. When I was 14, I started hanging out in Union Square, which is when I was introduced to hardcore, metal, rock, electro-clash and hardstyle. Growing up in New York and having so many different types of friends really gave me this crazy encyclopedia of music. that I've stayed true to from day one."

Joey LaBeija'sViolatorEP, which comes out March 23, is now available for pre-order, here.

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Joey LaBeija's 'Violator' EP Will Bring Hedonism to Dead NYC Club ... - Out Magazine