[78-L] Well EXCUUUUUUSE MEEEEE!!!

[Kristjan Saag]

Steven C. Barr wrote:
>>> "Easy listening" is (and is supposed to be?!) a nice pleasant and INoffensive sound to keep one's ears "busy" while NOT requiring any effort from one's brain...?!/snip
>>> One can use almost ANY contact with "the outside world" to exemplify this "content vs. blah" concept!

I wrote:
>>>
>>> Steven says:
>>> Content is brain
>>> Non-content is blah
>>> And brain is supposed to be better than blah.
>>> Children don't always agree. Neither did Dada. Neither does zen.
>>> Eric Satie laughed at it, as does Brian Eno (ambient music).
>>> The notion of content as superior to non-content is a very intellectual,
>>> basically bourgeois and definitely Lutheran misconception. It says: we
>>> have to work (our brains) even in our pastimes. Never let go. Never
>>> forget our duties.
>>> Don't just play around, kid!
>>> (Sigh.)
>>>
>>>
Steven replied:

 > If that were actually true, we would have NO reason to expend the effort
 > and money to find and purchase 78's...?! All we would want/need for our
 > music would be a nice content-free "easy listening" CD or two (or the
 > MP3 equivalents?!). I would guess that virtually all of us track down
 > and purchase 78's simply because almost all of their musical "content"
 > is NOT available otherwise?!
--
I'm not saying that music with "content" should be replaced by music 
without "content".  It's the normative approach that's troublesome: the 
notion that one type of music is superior to the other. In this case: 
that good music HAS to activate our intellect and/or emotions - or it 
isn't good music.
I happen to eat both sausages and burgers, pasta and pizza, ice cream 
and pudding. And, I assure you, it's perfectly possible to enjoy both 
the intellectual/ emotional way of listening and the intellectually 
passive/ meditative. What usually prevents us from the latter is our 
cultural codes: effort, responsibility, presence, seriousness...which 
also define quality. And help to define our tastes.
Tastes change, in society as within ourselves. We live in a time when 
the "lazy" approach, the slacker's attitude towards art and labour has 
become more dominant. It helps to produce a lot of crap, but so has 
periods of serious  persistence. The good thing with the present 
easiness is that it has freed creativity that used to be bound within 
certain aesthetic hierarchies. The curious young musician today has 
skipped those hierarchies and looks everywhere to find inspiration, 
samples Arthur Lyman one day, Billie Holiday the next. Mantovani isn't 
excluded, neither is Stravinsky or Patti Page's Doggy.
These kids like to play - and I hope they stay kids that way.
I wish we could too, more than we are. The first step would be to stop 
vomiting over the playfulness in others, just because the games they 
play don't fit our taste.
Kristjan