Music of the Spheres

My wife and I do not watch "American Idol".  The humiliation of untalented people, looking to parlay their willingness to subject themselves to embarassment into their fifteen minutes of fame, is just not pleasant.  We won't watch.

Interestingly, we live in a society where people are told from early on in life that, if they don't sing well, they shouldn't sing at all.  I have heard the joke a number of times (and repeated it an embarassing number of times, too):

"Who sings that song?"
"It's (insert favorite performer's name)'s song."
"Well, let's keep it that way."

It is a beautiful joke.  It combines insult with humor, and everybody walks away chuckling. But it also creates an environment that is toxic to making music.

The message is pretty clear.  Leave the music-making to the professionals.  Nobody likes hearing amateurish efforts.  We love hearing Beyonce, Bono, Sting, Tricia Earwig, Carrie Overwood, Tailer Swift, Dame Gaga, Ryehanna.... whomever, but we want our professionals to be professionals. Being professional means not singing if you don't have a beautiful voice.  Means not singing once you have become old.  Or, once you become old, make sure that your voice is digitized, so that you sound better than you can produce live.  Lip sync whenever you can get away with it (but it had better be YOUR voice - no Milla Vanila for us, thank you). Perfect the sound before it comes to our ears.

Entertain us.  Do it well.  We can sway, but unless you call for us to shout out the lyrics with you, the performance is a chance for YOU to entertain US.

Your music is art.  And we, the purchasers of that art, will pay and judge and own that art.  But we will not be creators of that art.  We will be connoisseurs. Consumers.  Music will be a commodity, and we will fetishize it and package it, buy and sell it, and own it.

It wasn't always that way. 

Member of the Pack

I was bitten by a pit bull this morning. 

I am fine.  Not even broken skin.  And to be fair, he had no desire to hurt me.  I just got in the way, and he reacted to my arm being where it was definitely not supposed to be....

...which was between his mouth and the throat of my neighbor's dog.

Let me back up. Adam and I walk the same 2-1/2 mile route every morning at 6am.  It provides a little bit of exercise for us, gets the blood flowing, lets his dog - Oreo - get some fresh air, and we discuss stuff. Married guy stuff sometimes, working stiff stuff sometimes, philosophical discussions sometimes, and sometimes we talk about Taylor Swift or Katherine McFee.  Not infrequently, those discussions lead to ideas for blog entries (well, maybe less frequently for the McFee conversations...).

One of the things we talk about is the fact that Oreo reacts to us as members of his pack.  One week, Adam's aunt (insert 80's musical joke here) walked with us, and Oreo got confused and anxious if two of us walked ahead, because we had split the pack.  If only one goes ahead, or another stays behind, it is not a concern. That is just normal recon - any member of the pack will rejoin after their scouting mission is complete.

But splitting the pack is not allowed.  And is met with serious anxiety. For in Oreo's mind, we are a pack.  We even walk like one, with Oreo on Adam's left side (my position varies...).