Music rant.

THe other day someone told me I take music too seriously, My response was 'someone's got to.' It seems everyones too busy having fun with music. Too busy believing they relate to retarded and happy pop songs or vaguely emotional songs about feelings the artist expressing probably doesn't feel too often themselves. I'm not particularly fond with the state of music as it is, and I blame both the musicians and fans for that. And I also feel what art has became is largely due to our fascination with frivolity. Reading Freud's Civilization and its Discontent, he addressed the idea of beauty and its aesthetic, although useless, appeal to people. I began questioning why I enjoy music as well and whether or not I look to it so that I may see beauty.

I first said I probably do, so I'm not very different from anyone else listening to music for simple reasons like enjoyment, but upon further over-analysis, I realized I really don't do anything for enjoyment, except hang out with friends and joke. And even then I'm always the one trying to start a serious conversation or steer myself away from one because all my cynical beliefs will unravel and I'd probably leave while weeping.

I'm a fan of post-metal and a lot of the lyrics aren't great, to be frank. But they do have a purpose, I feel, and they are coupled with very strong and sensible instrumentals that evoke various emotions I probably don't really get to experience anywhere else. The various crescendos of a band like Rosetta's really feel like gaping wholes in the vast emptiness of life, where only feeling resides. Its hard to define, and as a psychology major, I'm partially ashamed to even say that, but its a lot like what Iggy Pop once described in an interview when, about being in the throes of the music he's making, he said "I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain...you couldn't feel anything, and you wouldn't want to either."

It is that very cathartic moment of a lapse of anything that makes the music perfect. ANd it is that very cathartic moment that generic and cheap, pop music lacks. As humans, we get tired of the same shit and we get bored often, even millionaires are constantly seeking out new pleasures and new ways to feel good, and why the same boring ass music gets popular is a slightly perplexing matter. On one hand, I know there are still generations and legions of individuals experiencing what I may call old and dated for the first time and on the other hand, there are people that just don't want to be offended by music or have to pay more attention than they already do in order to enjoy a piece of music.

What I am professing is that we acknowledge the importance of music, and all arts really, as well as the effects of it. Also that we be honest with ourselves when deciding what we relate to. No one listens to Jay-Z because they too have an everlasting amount of funds, but thosep eople do relate to the desire to gain and prosper. ANd I'm not sure what artists really talk about that aside from maybe a few underground rapeprs, but thats the amazing part about searching for music, just like searching for love and purpose in this world, all the minor parts that you pick up along the way actually do have a definable value to you, and when you do finally get what you've been looking for, you're not ashamed to have collected segments and particles prior to that. Its all the more fulfilling if you ask me, but I've never been one to be seen as more than weird in most ways. I just prefer if life meant more than predictable accomplishments and a neurological reaction we were all trained to believe in.