Mike G wrote:
Quote:
Our one year old is perfect in every way, except he shows no inclination to rock.
That's because rock is
your music.
He will start listening to hip hop when he's three, and you will hate it. That will be the point of his music for the next 17 years or so.
How dissappointing yet true. If I had ever had a kid or two, I had hoped to share my love of music with them. But Mike is right; any attempt to "share" our tastes with our offspring (or anybody else) is a decision that is bound to result in failure. Taste in music -- or even just a basic appreciation of it -- is highly, highly personal, and not to be translated, imposed or imparted to another. You can only show it to them (as Ken Nordine once famously asked, can you show a sound? Why not... anyway). If I did have kids, and if Mike's analysis is literally true and inevitable, then I guess I'd be listening to music secretly, perhaps only alone in the car or on headphones. Or I'd build a sound-proof bunker in the basement for my reclusive listening pleasure, post-kid bedtime. Maybe let them believe I have a drinking problem, just to be left alone by them. This would be my means of protecting them from the reaction noted by Mike, above. Otherwise, I'd be cutting them off from the possible enjoyment (at least
admitted enjoyment) of the entire canon of Western music not composed and performed in the last 15 minutes, any and all of which I am at least open to listening to carefully and critically. Keeping carefully open (but critical) ears, with no pre-judgment and in the perennial attempt to expand my enjoyment in a new direction, has been central to my largely autodidactic experience of and ecucation in music appreciation for many, many years now. My own parents hardly listened to music at all, and it's a neverending source of amazement to Mrs. JiLS just how much I care about the stuff (she can take or leave most of it; it's just a soundtrack for her). There must be a music-appreciation gene; it probably relates to math ability and may have skipped down or across my own family tree. While I love and appreciate music deeply, I cannot carry a tune nor can I play an instrument; likewise, I got all A's in math up until that last semester of calculus in high school, in which I crashed and burned. I get both music and math; I just cannot
do them. Just an interesting parallel there. All that said, no form of art is more conducive to hermetic geekiness than music. That is because there is so much of it, and the experience requires an investment of time to appreciate, that naturally one tends to lock into something and make it personal, if for no other reason than that the prospect of developing a catholic taste in music through direct experience is daunting. And there are also 3,000,000 books in the library. Ah, Dr. Faustus; I grok thee, I do.
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