MUSIC

     In a previous essay I spoke of being a "cultural misanthrope" (see essay "Beer"). If my dislike for beer might brand me as such, my next confession will relegate me to the realm of the mental lepers, to be cast away in permanent cultural quarantine.

     I'm sick of music!

     Gasp! you might think, what a mean spirited person this fellow must be. I bet he kicks cats, snarls at kids and loses patience with little old ladies. How can anyone not like music?

     Can a person who is fed up with music also be a decent human being? Undoubtedly, the neighbors I am constantly imploring to control their weapons of musical destruction would think of me in the same breath as an ax murderer. As for my own defense, my conscience is clear. (Author's note - I wrote this essay in the mid 90's. As I put this piece on the web in 2003, I'm proud to say that the phrase "weapons of musical destruction" was not inspired by the idiocy of the Bush Oil Wars, and can be said to be way ahead of its time.)

     When I ponder this music thing more closely, it's not so much that I hate music, but the role music has taken on in our society.

     Music is everywhere. Music can't be escaped. It's in your house, at the beach, in the car, on the plane, it jogs with you, dines with you, shops with you, it waits with you at the doctor, the dentist, the airport, the elevator, it invades from your neighbor's yard, blares from passing cars, . stop it! stop it! Can't we decree some kind of music free zone? I want to hear my own thoughts again.

     Music has become furniture, background, a cultural placebo that is hardly being listened to. The only time you really notice it is when they turn it off!

     The last time I went to a Big League baseball game I was literally mugged by loud music --- between each inning, whenever they changed pitchers, whenever there was time to fill, MUGGED! Whatever happened to the sound of the ball thwacking into the catcher's mitt, or the vendors hawking their wares, or the simple sounds of a happy crowd at a ball game? What about surf at the shore, wind in the pines, birds in flight .?

       The passion has gone out of music. It is the latest fix to placate the boredom of an intellectually dull populace. Today's pop music has a beat that is both so ignorable and so hypnotic, one could almost believe there is some kind of mind numbing conspiracy afoot to subjugate the masses.

     How different the musical experience must have been before there was recorded music. Imagine the concert hall in Vienna or the opera house in Milan; imagine the wondrous expectation at the one place where the marvelous sound could be heard. Even the wandering minstrel or the band in the park had to be something special.

     Some might argue that the contemporary rock concert is charged with passion and emotion. I could agree, but is it really a musical experience or more a hormonal gathering of the youthful tribe? The music might even be seen as secondary, just so long as it's loud, has the predictable spaghetti-brain beat, and is performed by the usual stamp of long-haired, tattooed, crucifixed rockers. The rock concert has become the biggest cliché in the world of the performing arts.

     I'm trying to be objective as I ask if perhaps a man past his prime is thinking these thoughts . but no, if I am to be honest with myself, I must affirm that the passion is gone, blown to bits by commercial saturation. Music is now just something to fill in the time, to distract rather than enrich. Its primary role, as it whines away incessantly in the background, is to placate, to dull our senses, to close our minds to the world around us.

     Music is not music anymore. It's just something we are used to having around.

Relevant Material - "A mortal cholera impregnates western society: the cholera of pop culture that the printing presses spit out and the radio stations transmit, that impregnates everything and makes everything vulgar. It is flooding us and will end up drowning us." From one of James Michener's lesser-known books, and, in this writer's opinion, his best, "The Novel".