If music were the food of love…I’d be in a marriage of convenience
I'm still sorting out my music collection. It's going quite slowly because - and I think this falls into the 'embarrassingly odd' category - I’m not very good at music.
I’m entirely crap at it in a Grade One Piano And Stage Fright sense, although I apparently have a good sense of rhythm. I’m the 13-year old bursting into tears and fleeing the stage in the middle of Mary Had A Little Lamb while the rest of the music school (ages 4-8) merrily tinkle their way through Variations on a Theme of Very Complicated Music by Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky (it’s OK - the spell check doesn’t know how that should go either).
More importantly - and perhaps more embarrassingly - I’m not very good at music in the listening to it sense either. I can tune out pretty much any music, at any volume, which would be useful - slept through a rock concert once - if I could control it. As it is, I find myself drifting off about ten seconds into a song, and not to think about anything useful either.
The only thing that keeps me listening all the way through a whole song is if the lyrics are catchy, like good poetry. They don’t have to be good poetry - although that helps - but they have to at least be discernable. I like to know what I’m singing along to.
It’s bad enough when I understand the words, but know I’m completely missing the meaning (Whose purple hills? What do you mean, ‘you know what I mean’? I don’t.) because I’ve been stung that way before (‘Bent’? Means gay? Why?) but it’s worse when I can’t discern the lyrics, or have misheard them, because all of a sudden I’m singing along to a song which is about some bloke killing this girl he fancies. And now, if I hear Leonard Cohen, I see dead people, and it creeps me the hell out. (What do you mean, you think this one is actually just about how lovely the roses are? Subtext! He wants to kill them! It’s obvious!)
If you’ve listened to the radio lately, you may be beginning to understand why this is a problem. It’s not that I don’t like electronica, or dance beats, or rock, or nu-metal, or classical music, or whatever, it’s just that…I can’t listen to it. I can’t remember it unless it’s got lyrics (or if I sing along to it, naaaa nananana nananana na na), and even if it does, I’m unlikely to remember what it’s called, or who it’s by, so if I wanted to buy it, I can’t. I’m dependant on the whims of charity shops (or the sale bin at City Disc) and music festivals, because some how seeing a band live tends to cement their music in my head for long enough to get to a record store. Probably.
Despite this, I like music. I like CDs. I like shopping for music, buying something because the first ten seconds of the first three tracks sound good, and it’s cheap. I really, really like listening to music while I’m driving somewhere - because that uses up the other half of my brain, so I can concentrate on both better than I otherwise can on either. I like listening to music while I’m wondering around Migros looking for the tinned sweet corn. I like listening to three songs while I get dressed for a job interview, or an album while I clean my room, or a couple of tracks while I update Live Journal.
I just wish I didn’t ‘wake up’ and realise I didn’t hear any of it.
I’m entirely crap at it in a Grade One Piano And Stage Fright sense, although I apparently have a good sense of rhythm. I’m the 13-year old bursting into tears and fleeing the stage in the middle of Mary Had A Little Lamb while the rest of the music school (ages 4-8) merrily tinkle their way through Variations on a Theme of Very Complicated Music by Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky (it’s OK - the spell check doesn’t know how that should go either).
More importantly - and perhaps more embarrassingly - I’m not very good at music in the listening to it sense either. I can tune out pretty much any music, at any volume, which would be useful - slept through a rock concert once - if I could control it. As it is, I find myself drifting off about ten seconds into a song, and not to think about anything useful either.
The only thing that keeps me listening all the way through a whole song is if the lyrics are catchy, like good poetry. They don’t have to be good poetry - although that helps - but they have to at least be discernable. I like to know what I’m singing along to.
It’s bad enough when I understand the words, but know I’m completely missing the meaning (Whose purple hills? What do you mean, ‘you know what I mean’? I don’t.) because I’ve been stung that way before (‘Bent’? Means gay? Why?) but it’s worse when I can’t discern the lyrics, or have misheard them, because all of a sudden I’m singing along to a song which is about some bloke killing this girl he fancies. And now, if I hear Leonard Cohen, I see dead people, and it creeps me the hell out. (What do you mean, you think this one is actually just about how lovely the roses are? Subtext! He wants to kill them! It’s obvious!)
If you’ve listened to the radio lately, you may be beginning to understand why this is a problem. It’s not that I don’t like electronica, or dance beats, or rock, or nu-metal, or classical music, or whatever, it’s just that…I can’t listen to it. I can’t remember it unless it’s got lyrics (or if I sing along to it, naaaa nananana nananana na na), and even if it does, I’m unlikely to remember what it’s called, or who it’s by, so if I wanted to buy it, I can’t. I’m dependant on the whims of charity shops (or the sale bin at City Disc) and music festivals, because some how seeing a band live tends to cement their music in my head for long enough to get to a record store. Probably.
Despite this, I like music. I like CDs. I like shopping for music, buying something because the first ten seconds of the first three tracks sound good, and it’s cheap. I really, really like listening to music while I’m driving somewhere - because that uses up the other half of my brain, so I can concentrate on both better than I otherwise can on either. I like listening to music while I’m wondering around Migros looking for the tinned sweet corn. I like listening to three songs while I get dressed for a job interview, or an album while I clean my room, or a couple of tracks while I update Live Journal.
I just wish I didn’t ‘wake up’ and realise I didn’t hear any of it.