The tragedy of idolizing music
This is long. The importance of the paragraph is inversely related to its offset in the vertical direction. I mean, the last paragraph is the most important, and its importance declines the farther up you go.
So I got 2 of the three CD's I ordered today. I'm still waiting for the $30 dollar one, but these were by the same composer. I heard a couple songs off of each of these, and I really thought they were gonna totally rock. Darn it... really good music is sooo good, but it is sooo hard to find. And I really wanted some good music to add to my collection, cause it's been a while. I mean, the last CD I got that I sort of liked was... X&Y... I think. Trying to remember what I got recently. It was good and all, in a very "normal good" sense. But it wasn't like Habib Koite or anything. I haven't listened to X&Y very often anymore, but I still regularly listen to Habib's albums 5 years after I got them.
Back to these 2 CD's. Guess what? They totally suck! That's right! There's probably like 5 songs I'll listen to, out of a total of, uh, about 80 songs (not kidding, they both had 2 disks, each with 20 songs on them.) 5/80 = not a great batting average. The last soundtracks this guy did were so good, I could listen to them all day even if the game sucked. They had actual musical merit. They had this excellent tension going on in them... I wish I knew more about music. But you know how just about anything in a mixolydian or dorian scale sounds better than in a major scale? It's because of the tension it brings into the music. And that was what was so great about all of his earlier stuff. He was creative with modes, and his melodies were much simpler and catchier, although some were complex, but they were complex without losing the listener.
95% of the stuff I'm listening to (right now, as I type even) has all the tension cut completely from the music, and that's why it sucks. I guess the earshattering highs of the synth accordion might contribute as well.
So, uh, why did I say this post was about "Idolizing music?" Seriously, music moves us more than anything else I can think of. If I could compose music instead of paint, I would do it in a heartbeat. My head is filled with images I could paint, and I can bust out a drawing of one of these no problem. But with music, I don't have my own invented melody in my mind, I have the melodies of a thousand other songs randomly playing. I have an idea of how a song should be, but no clue how to make it that way. Most music is... ok. I listen to most music and think, "I can see that someone might like to listen to it. But that person is not me." Some music is good, and I like it a lot, but it doesn't have it. (it, for the moment, is some un-catagorizeable - possibly through lack of musical education - element of a song which paralyzes the individual Tim Marston. it's may vary according to individual.) But then, there are are certain songs that are in a catagory of their own... they have an element of something that is so perfect, it awakens some incredible desire in the listener. But it always misses the perfection mark. And I feel like, because I can see the flaw, or atleast, know it is there, somehow that means I could make the perfect song. So I try to write the perfect song, and it is a complete disaster. I end up plunking around on my guitar for about half an hour, then give up in complete depression. "Song writing is not for me," I realize. So, instead, I hope someone else has my same it, and simultaneously has the gift of composition. I spend so much time trying to find this music. And I always think I've found it with some new CD. Then I listen to it, and... sigh.
This is the one encouraging thought from this all - I wonder if this desire for the supremely beautiful... something... is meant to draw us towards God. A lot of times, I associate God with such crappy aesthetics and I forget that all beauty is found in him. When I do a cross-reference search in my brain of God and Beauty, purple sound-absorption panels come up (don't ask me why), along with speakers hanging from the ceilings of cavernous hexagonal shaped rooms with wooden pews, stone cathedrals, dots hoping on projected images of praise songs, gorgeous stained glass windows, snow on pine trees, and black sure Shure SM-58 microphones. A postmodern list if there was one. But the point is, what should have come up doesn't. What should have come up is this unfulfilled desire for the gorgeous. When I think of God and beauty, what should come to mind are these things which are so incredibly gorgeous, that it's like the fingerprint of God, almost, but not himself. Almost like a shadow of the real beauty which HE has and possesses. I am starting to think this way but I'm not quite there yet. But I bet that if we really truly believed that God is the most beautiful, that all the desires for beauty are found in him, that would completely change how we related to him.
So I got 2 of the three CD's I ordered today. I'm still waiting for the $30 dollar one, but these were by the same composer. I heard a couple songs off of each of these, and I really thought they were gonna totally rock. Darn it... really good music is sooo good, but it is sooo hard to find. And I really wanted some good music to add to my collection, cause it's been a while. I mean, the last CD I got that I sort of liked was... X&Y... I think. Trying to remember what I got recently. It was good and all, in a very "normal good" sense. But it wasn't like Habib Koite or anything. I haven't listened to X&Y very often anymore, but I still regularly listen to Habib's albums 5 years after I got them.
Back to these 2 CD's. Guess what? They totally suck! That's right! There's probably like 5 songs I'll listen to, out of a total of, uh, about 80 songs (not kidding, they both had 2 disks, each with 20 songs on them.) 5/80 = not a great batting average. The last soundtracks this guy did were so good, I could listen to them all day even if the game sucked. They had actual musical merit. They had this excellent tension going on in them... I wish I knew more about music. But you know how just about anything in a mixolydian or dorian scale sounds better than in a major scale? It's because of the tension it brings into the music. And that was what was so great about all of his earlier stuff. He was creative with modes, and his melodies were much simpler and catchier, although some were complex, but they were complex without losing the listener.
95% of the stuff I'm listening to (right now, as I type even) has all the tension cut completely from the music, and that's why it sucks. I guess the earshattering highs of the synth accordion might contribute as well.
So, uh, why did I say this post was about "Idolizing music?" Seriously, music moves us more than anything else I can think of. If I could compose music instead of paint, I would do it in a heartbeat. My head is filled with images I could paint, and I can bust out a drawing of one of these no problem. But with music, I don't have my own invented melody in my mind, I have the melodies of a thousand other songs randomly playing. I have an idea of how a song should be, but no clue how to make it that way. Most music is... ok. I listen to most music and think, "I can see that someone might like to listen to it. But that person is not me." Some music is good, and I like it a lot, but it doesn't have it. (it, for the moment, is some un-catagorizeable - possibly through lack of musical education - element of a song which paralyzes the individual Tim Marston. it's may vary according to individual.) But then, there are are certain songs that are in a catagory of their own... they have an element of something that is so perfect, it awakens some incredible desire in the listener. But it always misses the perfection mark. And I feel like, because I can see the flaw, or atleast, know it is there, somehow that means I could make the perfect song. So I try to write the perfect song, and it is a complete disaster. I end up plunking around on my guitar for about half an hour, then give up in complete depression. "Song writing is not for me," I realize. So, instead, I hope someone else has my same it, and simultaneously has the gift of composition. I spend so much time trying to find this music. And I always think I've found it with some new CD. Then I listen to it, and... sigh.
This is the one encouraging thought from this all - I wonder if this desire for the supremely beautiful... something... is meant to draw us towards God. A lot of times, I associate God with such crappy aesthetics and I forget that all beauty is found in him. When I do a cross-reference search in my brain of God and Beauty, purple sound-absorption panels come up (don't ask me why), along with speakers hanging from the ceilings of cavernous hexagonal shaped rooms with wooden pews, stone cathedrals, dots hoping on projected images of praise songs, gorgeous stained glass windows, snow on pine trees, and black sure Shure SM-58 microphones. A postmodern list if there was one. But the point is, what should have come up doesn't. What should have come up is this unfulfilled desire for the gorgeous. When I think of God and beauty, what should come to mind are these things which are so incredibly gorgeous, that it's like the fingerprint of God, almost, but not himself. Almost like a shadow of the real beauty which HE has and possesses. I am starting to think this way but I'm not quite there yet. But I bet that if we really truly believed that God is the most beautiful, that all the desires for beauty are found in him, that would completely change how we related to him.
posted by tmm at
2:02 PM
2 Comments:
i only read the last paragraph because you made it sound like it was the most important and the blog was long.
so, let's believe exactly that the finest things are in God himself - which they are, obviouslsy - but then turn to Him for the best.
the trouble with obvious things is that they may my be obvious while at the same time not in our heart and life in such a way that they affect us in any practical way. so i find that i need to seek God more to get His ways into my heart of hearts.
i hate talking about this stuff and feeling like my life doesn't line up. i guess that is what God's patience covers. and i guess that is why mercy is, in my opinion, the greatest virtue.
oh wait, i take it back. i read the second to last paragraph too. it was fabulous.
i know what you mean about the ability of a song to paralyze andrew jacobs. but like you said - even though they hit me, i can hop out of the paraylysis and i want a paralysis i can't escape. what i am saying is that i often want God to strike my heart so hard that i really can't just escape into some mental construct anymore. but this may kill a man. i don't know.
and about the awakening of some rad desire, i know. it is like a song makes you cry out for what it is talking about but then you can't attain that which it made you think of. but i think life here is more about the process than the resolution. we are human beings, after all, on fallen planet earth. this place does not have some of the resolutions - this is why Jesus came here. we wait. Jesus Himself is the resolution we seek. we find peace through himility before Him, i believe.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home