6-7 Sep 2010
I woke up at 12:00 PM and took 1 piracetam and choline, and again at 6:00 PM and 12:00 AM. I got about five hours of sleep, with some interesting dreams. During the day, I apparently developed some kind of persistent sinus congestion, either from an ongoing allergic reaction or perhaps a mild cold, but it seems to have passed now.
I managed to get some writing done tonight for tomorrow's video. I think I found a new fallacy, or a unique combination of the usual ones. I still have to finish editing the last video, but I'm basically just stacking these up since I may not get the chance to make another video until some time next week. We're having (new) relatives over from Thursday up to Tuesday, and there are various major events going on over the weekend, like a wedding (not mine).
My family has a somewhat interesting relationship with music. We have a 50 CD changer, which they've stocked with all their music (I don't have many CDs and my music would probably bother them) for at least the past year. In that time, not too many have been added or removed. It's usually on shuffle when they're around, so it's been somewhat like an ongoing random repetition of the same 600 songs or so. In that time, I've come to "know" practically all of them. I don't remember them in the sense of being able to recall or identify them specifically, but I'm familiar with them, so that when one comes on, I'll immediately recognize it: "Oh, it's that one." For this reason, none of them are new or unpredictable, and I've heard them enough times that there's no longer any need to bother actively listening. Each one just enters my head of its own accord and reinforces itself. I have to wonder how much brain-space this is occupying.
The most common CDs are: Muse, Radiohead, The Decemberists, The Offspring, XTC, Green Day, and Nickelback. Less common: Iron & Wine, Lifehouse, The Bobs, Beck, Laurie Anderson, Indigo Girls, Linkin Park.
It's intriguing how, after a time, you don't necessarily perceive it or interpret it as music anymore. It's only something you happen to hear, more or less blended together as a vast and expansive backdrop of sound. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon on this scale, of an entire large set of music "losing" its musicality by exposure?
I worked at a stop & shop for 2 years during college, I don't know if this is store specific or just the one I worked at, but pretty much looped the same 60-100 songs. All roughly in a category I'd define as "inoffensive pop-rock" from the mid-90's. So a lot of Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, Six Pence Non The Richer, etc. Always the same songs. After 3 months it was annoying, but after the 6th month it was little more then white noise. Customers would actually say "I haven't heard this song in ages" and it would take me a moment to focus and actually remember what in the hell was being played over the speaker system as I'd just come to drone it out.
As a musician, I have found that I never notice a loss of musicality, but rather just notice correlations between one type of music that I hear often and another that may be heard later, particularly when it comes to newer music. In other words, I recognize the patterns, progressions and styles used in the emulation of popular/overplayed songs that are present in other music. Even a bulk of my own writing comes from just having a gestalt of music to which I've listened whirring in my head and eventually just taking the form of an original piece (I use the term "original" very loosely, here).
I suppose in summation, while it remains distinctly musical to me, plenty of songs have just become more of an easily placed pattern than anything else. I hope that all made sense.
- Morte.
Yay for nootropics!
I'm an avid listener to music and I think I might know exactly where your are coming from on this. Mainstream music as a whole is about having the "catchiest hooks" or a "good beat", rather than any sort of real substance.
Its designed as a product to be consumed by the musical industry, due to cultures such as MTV and VH1 the teenage demographic has has been overexposed to the notion that by listening to, and thus paying huge sums of money to, these specific "artists" they somehow become relevant, cool and/or sexy.
I don't consider myself a musical purist and I'm not a huge fan of academic music because I think a lot of it is too pretentious and remote from the tribulations of modern life. (even if a lot of it does have artistic value). Some of the artists I appreciate are: E.S Posthumus, Two Steps from Hell, Karl Jenkins, Brian Crain, Mike Oldfield, Nobuo Uematsu, Apocalyptica, Aesmea Daeva, Therion, Rhapsody of Fire, Amethystium, Break of Reality, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss.
"Mainstream music as a whole is about having the "catchiest hooks" or a "good beat", rather than any sort of real substance.
Its designed as a product to be consumed by the musical industry"
You almost make it sound like this would be something inherently bad. I would say it really depends to what use you put music.
If for example you hear it with the goal to set yourself(by manipulating your subconscious) in a certain mood then substance of the play has almost no impact(except the mood is something out of the realm of "funny", then you do need a conscious involvement).
If it is provoke an conscious thinking process then I am afraid that every kind of music I am aware of is completely inadequate for the job(compared to other kinds of media(the "substance of music seems to be always inferior to the "substance" of other media(in general))).
If it is to promote some kind of political opinion or opinion on society in general(an notion which seemingly today has become an automatically a batch of quality for the artist and song(I am not saying the opposite is true)), a political pamphlet/website/blog would work just as well.
In conclusion...well I would say that I dont have much of a conclusion here except that the necessity for substance in music is overrated (a very vague statement I know)
Music does serve many purposes, if for example you listen to music to feel relevant, hip or sexy and "Bad Romance" allows you to accomplish this, then I suppose it has served it's purpose then. Without going into the questionable authenticity of such shallow sentiments, I personally see music as means of artistic expression. Not all music of course, but this is the "standard" I use to decide if I like a particular band or composer.
However, I don't compare "high" art to "low" art, but rather (aside from personal preference) things with artistic value to those that do not. Music that is produced to appeal to the most people possible in order to accumulate profit is not art, it is a product meant to be consumed. This type of music is designed to play to the insecurities of its targeted demographic just like fast food is designed to appeal to our basest desires for lipids and monosaccharides.
If you genuinely like it then by all means listen to it, just understand that it is meant to be consumed psychologically rather then artistically. I hope this clears some things up.
hm, that's odd, I've never experienced that but I can see how that would happen.
ZJ, how do you always go with like five hours of sleep every day?! I usually get 8 hours of sleep and I can still barely stay awake in school.
Not every day. Sometimes I get 6 or 7. 8 or more on a good day.
I think that happened when my friend came over and decided to play ‘Heaven is a Half-pipe' over and over again. We're not that friendly any more.
Especially if you're interested in aesthetics, you might be interested in a book called The Principles of Art by R. G. Collingwood. In it, he propounds the theory (originated, perhaps, by B. Croce) that art (in its broader sense) is both created and appreciated through "expression", which term he precisely defines for his use. He also describes the condition, "corruption of consciousness", wherein one loses the ability to "express" oneself - through the overuse and/or abuse of an "expression" (both internal and external). I think that "corruption of consciousness" is a very useful concept in far more areas than aesthetics.