6/21/17 Out of Tune
HIgh 70s and sunny, supposed to hit the low to mid 80s and maybe a shower later.
"What kind of music do you like?" is a very, very awkward question for me because the right answer in my case is seen as deliberately confusing or worse, completely obnoxious. The right answer is "I'm completely indifferent to or dislike the overwhelming majority of music that's ever been produced". However people seem to be shooting for a genre based answer when they ask that question which again is problematic because the right answer would be "A little bit of a bunch of different kinds of stuff" which sounds like I'm trying to be too cool or sophisticated. My own reaction when anyone give me that answer is usually to ask them what pieces from various different types of jazz they like or (especially if they're an older white person) who their favorite hip hop artist is.
Again, obnoxious. Why can't we avoid this discussion altogether?
Music to me is a parlor trick. It's magical. I am not a musician, I completely lack any musical talent or any ability even to discern what is actually "good" assuming such a distinction exists. Whether what I like is "good" is entirely based on the taste of the person evaluating my taste.
I told a musician friend of mine that I was envious of his ability to work this magic, these parlor tricks, the ability to take an instrument and produce enjoyable sound. His reply was "well, someone's got to be in the audience".
Fair enough. I'd say I was a proselytizer or curator except I've never been able to convince anyone of anything.
I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said (and I'm not going to do an Ask Jeeves search to confirm) "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Given that I'm told that music actually involves a lot of math and science (physics in particular) perhaps lack of talent on my part and on the part of other non-musicians indicates that we are somehow less evolved creatures than humans that can create music. That doesn't really ring true though because one would think by now humans that can create music would have slowly pushed non-musical humans out of the evolutionary tree.
We do have a tendency to apply primitive math to understanding music by having rankings and halls of fame and other "quantitative" measures but those are all bunk. We're still apes throwing bones at a monolith when we try to understand things that way.
So what kind of music do you like and what are your ten favorite albums?
"What kind of music do you like?" is a very, very awkward question for me because the right answer in my case is seen as deliberately confusing or worse, completely obnoxious. The right answer is "I'm completely indifferent to or dislike the overwhelming majority of music that's ever been produced". However people seem to be shooting for a genre based answer when they ask that question which again is problematic because the right answer would be "A little bit of a bunch of different kinds of stuff" which sounds like I'm trying to be too cool or sophisticated. My own reaction when anyone give me that answer is usually to ask them what pieces from various different types of jazz they like or (especially if they're an older white person) who their favorite hip hop artist is.
Again, obnoxious. Why can't we avoid this discussion altogether?
Music to me is a parlor trick. It's magical. I am not a musician, I completely lack any musical talent or any ability even to discern what is actually "good" assuming such a distinction exists. Whether what I like is "good" is entirely based on the taste of the person evaluating my taste.
I told a musician friend of mine that I was envious of his ability to work this magic, these parlor tricks, the ability to take an instrument and produce enjoyable sound. His reply was "well, someone's got to be in the audience".
Fair enough. I'd say I was a proselytizer or curator except I've never been able to convince anyone of anything.
I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said (and I'm not going to do an Ask Jeeves search to confirm) "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Given that I'm told that music actually involves a lot of math and science (physics in particular) perhaps lack of talent on my part and on the part of other non-musicians indicates that we are somehow less evolved creatures than humans that can create music. That doesn't really ring true though because one would think by now humans that can create music would have slowly pushed non-musical humans out of the evolutionary tree.
We do have a tendency to apply primitive math to understanding music by having rankings and halls of fame and other "quantitative" measures but those are all bunk. We're still apes throwing bones at a monolith when we try to understand things that way.
So what kind of music do you like and what are your ten favorite albums?
Comments