stayin' out late, getting rowdy at the bar and lookin' for trouble uptown.
I once knew a man who didn't like music. It wasn't that he was being pretentious and didn't like 'popular music' or he hadn't found his genre yet. He just didn't like music. He wouldn't listen to it when alone. He would drive in silence and fall asleep to a noise machine projecting out rain forest sounds. I couldn't accept this, really. Right now I am listening to Astral Weeks and I can understand if someone told me 'I just don't like Van Morrison. He is just not me.' Granted when I knew this man The Doors was my staple but that was for me then and there. In this sense I am fairly open. Music is personal. It isn't that our tastes match, or that I even respect your song. It is that you have a song that makes you happy/sad/anxious/whatever. It is enough for me that there is a song, which brings you to those moments when you were 16 driving to the beach with your friends singing every verse to a song you haven't listened to in years or there is an opening chord that, when it comes on the radio, reminds you of your first girlfriend. I never got this man until I met his antithesis.
It was the summer I was stranded in Maryland working. By definition he had no individual sense of music or what he liked. He listened to music sure and he had songs he liked. He made mix CDs for his friends and had a favorite radio station but it seemed so (and I don't want to sound pretentious, cause that isn't what I'm going for) shallow. He like the Beastie Boys single that was on the air at the time, but when I insisted he listen to Hello Nasty he 'didn't get it'. I played for him some of the George Harrison Indian psychedelic shit from Sgt. Pepper's and he said it was 'weird'. It wasn't that he didn't like my music; it was that he had no explanation for what he liked or disliked. He couldn't tell me his favorite bands or what he liked to listen to. Just a lot of 'I don't know... music'.
In some sense this was worse then just accepting that music isn't for you. If music is personal, and I believe it is, then how can you claim no personal attachment to it? This man confused me.
In a digression this was the summer where I met two Army twins from Oklahoma who bought 40 cans of tuna fish and 40 packages of ramen apiece and ate them every day for lunch and dinner. The summer I would run 7 miles a day 5 days a week. The summer I would go to all-you-can-eat crab huts where they brought over buckets of crabs and just dump them on your newspaper covered table for two hours until you can't move or they kick you out. It was the summer of cicadas and the summer I ruined a friendship over immaturity and sex. I was separated from friends and family, stuck in a backwoods town with nothing to do. I learned to blow smoke rings from my roommate’s cigars and watched a lot of movies over Chinese take out. This summer had a lot to do with where I am right now, and I haven't thought of it since.
And this is what goes through my head on nights where I listen to Van Morrison.
It was the summer I was stranded in Maryland working. By definition he had no individual sense of music or what he liked. He listened to music sure and he had songs he liked. He made mix CDs for his friends and had a favorite radio station but it seemed so (and I don't want to sound pretentious, cause that isn't what I'm going for) shallow. He like the Beastie Boys single that was on the air at the time, but when I insisted he listen to Hello Nasty he 'didn't get it'. I played for him some of the George Harrison Indian psychedelic shit from Sgt. Pepper's and he said it was 'weird'. It wasn't that he didn't like my music; it was that he had no explanation for what he liked or disliked. He couldn't tell me his favorite bands or what he liked to listen to. Just a lot of 'I don't know... music'.
In some sense this was worse then just accepting that music isn't for you. If music is personal, and I believe it is, then how can you claim no personal attachment to it? This man confused me.
In a digression this was the summer where I met two Army twins from Oklahoma who bought 40 cans of tuna fish and 40 packages of ramen apiece and ate them every day for lunch and dinner. The summer I would run 7 miles a day 5 days a week. The summer I would go to all-you-can-eat crab huts where they brought over buckets of crabs and just dump them on your newspaper covered table for two hours until you can't move or they kick you out. It was the summer of cicadas and the summer I ruined a friendship over immaturity and sex. I was separated from friends and family, stuck in a backwoods town with nothing to do. I learned to blow smoke rings from my roommate’s cigars and watched a lot of movies over Chinese take out. This summer had a lot to do with where I am right now, and I haven't thought of it since.
And this is what goes through my head on nights where I listen to Van Morrison.