Ten of Hearts
I feel that in the process of writing this, I’m going to change. And the changes can be either for good or bad, but I will change none the less. I’ve come to accept that I am a constantly changing person, and at the heart of that change is music.
Music, for the longest of times, has been my catalyst of thought and argument. For instance, when people ask me what I think of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, normally I can’t give them a definitive answer. I love the album, I really do. But memories, arguments, and thoughts are linked to that album in my head in ways I can never understand. This is one reason why I can’t clearly give anyone a definitive answer on my thoughts on the album. One day I might call the album a piece of genius work, while the next day I might shrug it off as just good.
But my problem is that all of the pieces of culture in the United States have that impact on me. Books, Movies, Music, Art all has a specific meaning and deep impact on who I am.
Take the song “Night Moves” by Bob Seger. That song will always remind me of the summer before my senior year of high school. Especially when I was working at the Madison Public Library, and how great it really was, despite my inevitable feeling of being an outcast with the staff. So when I hear that song (which is playing on my CD player right now) I think of that. Especially of the girl I met, and went out with a couple of times during that period. I don’t remember her name, but I remember that she had a very cool room. It was more like a one room apartment, and had all of the amenities it would need to be one. That’s all I really remember of her. I don’t remember how she looked, what her name was, or even if she was nice. It of course, never worked out. But then again that didn’t matter, because at that time I was happy to just have the company of someone to hang out with.
A book I own is much like that as well. I bought “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth because it was recommended to me by a former English Professor during my work on the seventh story in the Sierra Madre Series (currently not online, and there’s no excuse really…) when she told me to read it to help me develop a better voice for a character. And it helped a lot, and because of her suggestion I’ll always reference it in some way during the stories. I don’t know why exactly that seems important, but it is to me. And in my opinion, that’s all that matters.
So now, as I sit here typing this and thinking about things that have impacted me, and changed me, I have come to think that over the past few years all the music I’ve listened to is sort of the same. Look at a band called The Zutons, and their song “Zuton Fever.” It’s a great song, has a great rhythm and a sound much like that of the early Beatles and the copycats that came at the time. It still is a song I enjoy listening to, but since I love the Beatles so much, and compare them to the Beatles rather than another band, or saying that their music is not comparable to other groups, then I realize that everything has started to sound the same.
But in some way, all music is like this. Look at hip hop, a genre that is constantly changing the way people experience the music. But hip hop and rap, which are tied together in a way, haven’t just changed the face of music, but fashion, the automotive industry, and other things in culture and society that people generally don’t think about. However, much of the rap and hip hop I’ve listened to has the same sort of sound. It’s a localized feel, and the change from one year to the next is slight. All music begins to become the same over a long stretch of time. One day, we’ll think of rap from the beginning of this century much of how a mainstream listener of music thinks of ragtime or early jazz: old and incomprehensible.
This in some ways is very sad. Why do we feel the need to make people change so quickly in society? Is it basic consumerism, or is it a need to control what everyone is thinking? I can’t tell anymore, with MTV changing in a 7 year time span from sellouts to complete and utter sellouts. Viacom buying MTV completely destroyed what was once a great television station. It’s not the same, and will never be able to go back to what it initially was. This is why I hate MTV now, and will continue to hate it for the rest of my days as a television viewer. The programming is ridiculous (except for Pimp My Ride, which should really be on the Discovery channel) and unoriginal, the stereotypes are all the same. Nothing is new anymore on MTV.
* * * * * * * *
Nothing old is new again and this is the rule. Period. No arguments, no complaints. That leisure suit from the 1970’s you found at the thrift store is not going to be a new fashion statement for any period of future time, plain and simple. It might be retro, which is completely cool by me. Hell, I wear retro stuff too. I’ve found shirts at Thrift stores I thought I’d never be able to find. And they’re great shirts too.
The same goes for my t-shirts. I might wear them all the time, and the same ones appear regularly throughout my wardrobe, but they’re not anything special and new.
I’m comfortable with the fact that I’m not hip on the latest and greatest in New York Fashion. I’m not hip on the best in current music. I’ll probably never read a New York Times Best Seller while it is on the list. But I’m not too worried about that problem. Rather, I’d like to read something I like, listen to things that are good, and wear what I’m comfortable in. If this means I’ll wear jeans and t-shirts for the rest of my life, that’s fine with me. I like myself for who I am.
I’ll never discover a band that no one has ever heard of before. I’ll never see a movie before someone else has. And I’ll sure as hell never find an unknown book (unless it is mine, I’m sure.) I have no problem with being unoriginal sometimes, except for when I’m writing something from the heart. In fact, I think the biggest form of flattery is imitation. But I’ll never be a true imitator; I can never give up on my creative thoughts and feelings. I can’t give up the fact that my brain will always be thinking of a song for a moment.
I am boring, unoriginal, and a fool. I have the worst fashion sense in the history of man, and I can’t dance. I don’t really listen to hip hop or rap, or anything new for that matter. I am the un of cool. I’d rather be who I am than someone who is a fraud of a personality, only borrowing things from different cultures and peoples. They borrow from the wrong place, and their credibility as someone cool is completely shot. I refuse to be like that. I’d rather be un-cool than go through life worrying about the fact that I might not be dressed right for the occasion. Fuck that.
And you know what? I’m proud of being un-cool. It is the best thing that has ever happened to me. People might make fun of me behind my back, or call me a geek to my face, or even snicker at something funny I might do in front of them while being me. I can’t help that I try to dance to music when I listen to my headphones. I can’t help that I own a t-shirt that has a gnome on it. These are the things I enjoy, and if you don’t like it, fuck you. I’m not making you like me, or like the things I’m about.
My style might be old, my music outdated. The books I read might be old and crusty, and the movies I watch might have been seen a million times over. The sites I enjoy online might have been seen by everyone in the world before me, and the things I write might sound like they have been read a million times over.
But I’d rather be outdated than trying to be cool.
* * * * * * * *
The best song that Sheryl Crow ever wrote and played besides “All I Wanna Do” is “A Change (Will Do You Good).” I agree with the idea of the song, that change is constant and a good thing, and that by denying change, we deny the ideals of which we were taught in school. It doesn’t really say much, since schools in the United States are not about change or individuality. They’re more about teaching “knowledge” that will “enrich” our lives in the end. So when Crow sings “Hello, it's me, I'm not at home
If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone,” she is pointing out that she would rather be left alone from change and be who she is. This is my interpretation of what the song is trying to convey to the public. But in the song she doesn’t want to change, and this is a problem for her, or at least whoever the song is about. They fear the change and would rather be left to their own devices.
Without change, we are nothing. We can’t interpret events that happen in our lives, or even in the world. Without change, nothing gets better or worse. We stop functioning. Don’t like what’s on TV? Change the channel. Don’t enjoy the music on the radio, change the station. Don’t like the book? Put it down.
Life is all about choices and change. In order to change, we must make choices. We can’t go both routes and pick the one that ends better for us. We only get what we choose, and the change that happens in the process can be for the good or for the bad. It doesn’t matter.
Cause and effect, change happens. And maybe, since I know my musical choices will change over time, I should get over it and accept the change. And I have in some ways, accepting that over a long enough period of time, my music will be on the oldies station and nothing else. But I don’t care, I just want to listen to good music and be with good company in the process.
Music, for the longest of times, has been my catalyst of thought and argument. For instance, when people ask me what I think of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, normally I can’t give them a definitive answer. I love the album, I really do. But memories, arguments, and thoughts are linked to that album in my head in ways I can never understand. This is one reason why I can’t clearly give anyone a definitive answer on my thoughts on the album. One day I might call the album a piece of genius work, while the next day I might shrug it off as just good.
But my problem is that all of the pieces of culture in the United States have that impact on me. Books, Movies, Music, Art all has a specific meaning and deep impact on who I am.
Take the song “Night Moves” by Bob Seger. That song will always remind me of the summer before my senior year of high school. Especially when I was working at the Madison Public Library, and how great it really was, despite my inevitable feeling of being an outcast with the staff. So when I hear that song (which is playing on my CD player right now) I think of that. Especially of the girl I met, and went out with a couple of times during that period. I don’t remember her name, but I remember that she had a very cool room. It was more like a one room apartment, and had all of the amenities it would need to be one. That’s all I really remember of her. I don’t remember how she looked, what her name was, or even if she was nice. It of course, never worked out. But then again that didn’t matter, because at that time I was happy to just have the company of someone to hang out with.
A book I own is much like that as well. I bought “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth because it was recommended to me by a former English Professor during my work on the seventh story in the Sierra Madre Series (currently not online, and there’s no excuse really…) when she told me to read it to help me develop a better voice for a character. And it helped a lot, and because of her suggestion I’ll always reference it in some way during the stories. I don’t know why exactly that seems important, but it is to me. And in my opinion, that’s all that matters.
So now, as I sit here typing this and thinking about things that have impacted me, and changed me, I have come to think that over the past few years all the music I’ve listened to is sort of the same. Look at a band called The Zutons, and their song “Zuton Fever.” It’s a great song, has a great rhythm and a sound much like that of the early Beatles and the copycats that came at the time. It still is a song I enjoy listening to, but since I love the Beatles so much, and compare them to the Beatles rather than another band, or saying that their music is not comparable to other groups, then I realize that everything has started to sound the same.
But in some way, all music is like this. Look at hip hop, a genre that is constantly changing the way people experience the music. But hip hop and rap, which are tied together in a way, haven’t just changed the face of music, but fashion, the automotive industry, and other things in culture and society that people generally don’t think about. However, much of the rap and hip hop I’ve listened to has the same sort of sound. It’s a localized feel, and the change from one year to the next is slight. All music begins to become the same over a long stretch of time. One day, we’ll think of rap from the beginning of this century much of how a mainstream listener of music thinks of ragtime or early jazz: old and incomprehensible.
This in some ways is very sad. Why do we feel the need to make people change so quickly in society? Is it basic consumerism, or is it a need to control what everyone is thinking? I can’t tell anymore, with MTV changing in a 7 year time span from sellouts to complete and utter sellouts. Viacom buying MTV completely destroyed what was once a great television station. It’s not the same, and will never be able to go back to what it initially was. This is why I hate MTV now, and will continue to hate it for the rest of my days as a television viewer. The programming is ridiculous (except for Pimp My Ride, which should really be on the Discovery channel) and unoriginal, the stereotypes are all the same. Nothing is new anymore on MTV.
* * * * * * * *
Nothing old is new again and this is the rule. Period. No arguments, no complaints. That leisure suit from the 1970’s you found at the thrift store is not going to be a new fashion statement for any period of future time, plain and simple. It might be retro, which is completely cool by me. Hell, I wear retro stuff too. I’ve found shirts at Thrift stores I thought I’d never be able to find. And they’re great shirts too.
The same goes for my t-shirts. I might wear them all the time, and the same ones appear regularly throughout my wardrobe, but they’re not anything special and new.
I’m comfortable with the fact that I’m not hip on the latest and greatest in New York Fashion. I’m not hip on the best in current music. I’ll probably never read a New York Times Best Seller while it is on the list. But I’m not too worried about that problem. Rather, I’d like to read something I like, listen to things that are good, and wear what I’m comfortable in. If this means I’ll wear jeans and t-shirts for the rest of my life, that’s fine with me. I like myself for who I am.
I’ll never discover a band that no one has ever heard of before. I’ll never see a movie before someone else has. And I’ll sure as hell never find an unknown book (unless it is mine, I’m sure.) I have no problem with being unoriginal sometimes, except for when I’m writing something from the heart. In fact, I think the biggest form of flattery is imitation. But I’ll never be a true imitator; I can never give up on my creative thoughts and feelings. I can’t give up the fact that my brain will always be thinking of a song for a moment.
I am boring, unoriginal, and a fool. I have the worst fashion sense in the history of man, and I can’t dance. I don’t really listen to hip hop or rap, or anything new for that matter. I am the un of cool. I’d rather be who I am than someone who is a fraud of a personality, only borrowing things from different cultures and peoples. They borrow from the wrong place, and their credibility as someone cool is completely shot. I refuse to be like that. I’d rather be un-cool than go through life worrying about the fact that I might not be dressed right for the occasion. Fuck that.
And you know what? I’m proud of being un-cool. It is the best thing that has ever happened to me. People might make fun of me behind my back, or call me a geek to my face, or even snicker at something funny I might do in front of them while being me. I can’t help that I try to dance to music when I listen to my headphones. I can’t help that I own a t-shirt that has a gnome on it. These are the things I enjoy, and if you don’t like it, fuck you. I’m not making you like me, or like the things I’m about.
My style might be old, my music outdated. The books I read might be old and crusty, and the movies I watch might have been seen a million times over. The sites I enjoy online might have been seen by everyone in the world before me, and the things I write might sound like they have been read a million times over.
But I’d rather be outdated than trying to be cool.
* * * * * * * *
The best song that Sheryl Crow ever wrote and played besides “All I Wanna Do” is “A Change (Will Do You Good).” I agree with the idea of the song, that change is constant and a good thing, and that by denying change, we deny the ideals of which we were taught in school. It doesn’t really say much, since schools in the United States are not about change or individuality. They’re more about teaching “knowledge” that will “enrich” our lives in the end. So when Crow sings “Hello, it's me, I'm not at home
If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone,” she is pointing out that she would rather be left alone from change and be who she is. This is my interpretation of what the song is trying to convey to the public. But in the song she doesn’t want to change, and this is a problem for her, or at least whoever the song is about. They fear the change and would rather be left to their own devices.
Without change, we are nothing. We can’t interpret events that happen in our lives, or even in the world. Without change, nothing gets better or worse. We stop functioning. Don’t like what’s on TV? Change the channel. Don’t enjoy the music on the radio, change the station. Don’t like the book? Put it down.
Life is all about choices and change. In order to change, we must make choices. We can’t go both routes and pick the one that ends better for us. We only get what we choose, and the change that happens in the process can be for the good or for the bad. It doesn’t matter.
Cause and effect, change happens. And maybe, since I know my musical choices will change over time, I should get over it and accept the change. And I have in some ways, accepting that over a long enough period of time, my music will be on the oldies station and nothing else. But I don’t care, I just want to listen to good music and be with good company in the process.