From Sludge to Ambrosia: Popular Music and Why I Hate It

Hello again audience. It hasn't been too long since I last wrote, and some personal thinking and a couple conversations and such in the last few days have led me to want to write this blog about music.

Before I begin, I want to explain that music is so ingrained into who I am that it's practically an organ in my body. When I was still a tiny growing fetus, I would go completely nuts as soon as the worship portion of Sunday morning church service began. As I grew up, music continued to fill the air around me, and as soon as I learned to whistle, my fate was sealed. I'd pick up jingles from commercials on TV or the radio and whistle them over and over and over again until my dad was ready to glue my mouth shut. I sang at church in plays and in front of the adults during Sunday evening services. In fourth grade, I was introduced to the cello and began playing in my elementary school string orchestra. My sister was interested in playing piano for a while, and I took what I knew of reading music and such from cello and taught myself how to play some things on piano. I picked up guitar around seventh or eighth grade and fell totally in love with it. My brother played bass for a while and I used to sit in his room every once in a while and listen to him play. I played cello up until ninth grade, and then my parents traded my cello for an electric guitar halfway through tenth so I could pursue that. And I've played it religiously ever since.

My music tastes started humble, listening to classical music and contemporary christian from the radio. I got into some christian rock, and then my friend Alex introduced me to classic rock, punk and metal. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who, The Doors, The Clash, The Ramones, The Misfits, The Offspring, Beastie Boys, followed closely by Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Guns N Roses, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, that kinds of stuff. Some more modern stuff came up, like Disturbed, System of a Down, Korn, Slipknot, Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle, secular radio tunes and such. I stayed pretty close on the christian side of things for a while, but eventually branched into heavier metals. Dethklok came really early, along with Children of Bodom, Amon Amarth, then heavier stuff like Psycroptic and Quo Vadis, then even heavier stuff like Origin and Fleshgod Apocalypse. I got into hardcore, growing into liking early Haste The Day, As I Lay Dying, August Burns Red, The Devil Wears Prada, Underoath, earlier All That Remains, Anterior, Trivium, Killswitch Engage, and eventually more southern style stuff like Every Time I Die and Norma Jean. Everything changed pretty drastically when I was first introduced to Dream Theater.

All of these men are better at music than I'll ever be. Especially the little Asian one.

Progressive metal became my thing, and I fell in love with Andromeda, Pain of Salvation, and Cynic, and Coheed and Cambria on the lighter prog rock side of things. I got really into technical stuff again around then, discovering one of my very favorites, The Human Abstract, and getting into Meshuggah thanks to obZen. I started really liking the subgenre some call 'djent' this last year, picking up one of my other favorites, Periphery, and being introduced to bands like Textures, Heart Of A Coward, and Wayfarer. Now, between all of those, I found some more indie or alt rock bands I liked, including some stuff I can only honestly label as pop punk. Those bands had less influence on me, but are still things I like to listen to. I've carried a stereo to and from school because I didn't have a smaller cd player to listen to music during study times or such. I eventually got an iPod and filled it to the brim, then got a bigger one and now that one stays consistently full, around 3500 to 4200 songs or so and at least 150 artists if not more. Its headphone jack and screen broke and I cannibalized another iPod to replace them, and now I've ruined the headphone jack again. I constantly whistle or tap my feet of click my teeth back and forth against each other or hum or sing to myself or listen to music in my head. As long as I'm awake, there is some form of music going on, either physically or just where I can hear it.


I say all of this to make one point clear: When I say 'Music is my life,' I don't mean what most people mean, being 'I like to listen to some top 40 songs off the radio that are kinda catchy so I can memorize the lyrics and not be a social outcast at school.' Music really is my life. I've been doing something musical for as long as I can remember and I really don't go a day without listening to at least two to four hours of music and playing music on my guitar for a similar amount. It's my favorite thing to do, my primary way of connecting to people and getting to know them, and it's the first thing I have ever been dead set on doing for the rest of my life.


All that being said, I'd like to return to the title. Recently, while listening to Meshuggah in bed, I listened to the final track off their album Nothing, titled Obsidian. It's almost six minutes long and completely instrumental. Due to recent events and general stress, I had a strange ache in the pit of my stomach. Now, I'm usually affected by music in a way that is sometimes tangible, feeling warm and fuzzy or indestructible or getting the chills or whatever, but I have never been made to feel ill by a song, up until I listened to Obsidian that day. It took my stomach ache and made it twist and wrench and grow in an uncomfortable manner. I thought about it for a bit, and it's definitely not the heaviest or most extreme music I listen to, but it's probably the most extreme I've been exposed to in a while.


I talked to my metalhead pal David about it, and I asked if maybe it would have an even stronger effect on people less accustomed to extreme music. He suggested the idea that maybe it was like ambrosia, the food of the ancient Greek gods. It was reserved specifically for them and kept from mortals, and it was said that consuming ambrosia and nectar would cause ichor to flow through ones veins rather than blood. The gist of that being that extreme and technical music is powerful and amazing, but that it isn't meant for mortals to enjoy. Which would explain my reaction to such a strong dose of the stuff. Here it is for you to listen to and understand.






Along with that, I have a continuing hatred for popular music, and here's why. The artists may be passionate about what they do, but the product they put out is written and produced and designed purely to sell to the widest audience possible. Their goal in creating music is to sell records and make money, while doing what they enjoy and performing for audiences and such. My problem with this is that their music lacks integrity. It is shaped to be liked by as many people as possible, and therefore has to be simple and catchy and repetitive and talk about topics people like and want to hear about. Some examples of this are just about every song on the radio about dancing, going to the club, having sex, doing drugs, hanging out with friends, being happy, being sad, or partying. You know exactly what I'm talking about, Party Rock Anthem, you despicable piece of useless noise.

A lot of the artists I admire these days are the ones who play exactly what it is they love and are damn good at it. They find influence in really creative and unique musicians or bands, and then write and perform songs grown out of that influence. They end up with a really particular and interesting sound that sets them apart from most music these days. It's usually not the most popular sound, and they don't even end up on the radio a lot of times. In times before the internet music sharing craze, bands like this would gather a devoted cult following and then they would end up having to call it quits due to lack of support. Now, bands from cities all over the world can get their names spread out there and gain publicity and momentum without having to meet all of those people in person or reach them in a physical manner.

Periphery, as I mentioned above, is one of the primary forces in the 'djent' subgenre, finding influence in both progressive and heavy places. They have sounds ranging from light, melodic, and beautiful, to thick, chunky, and gritty grooves. They blend the two with clean and distorted guitars, sung and screamed vocals, and some techno fillers inbetween songs that act as a sort of palate cleanser and interlude. The band started as a result of the lead guitarst Bulb writing and creating music he posted free on the internet, and then pulling together a band to perform it live. Periphery's audience was primarily scattered widely at first due to their birth on the internet, giving them a wider base of support than a band who starts gaining popularity in one city and moves on. The greatest feat of the band is having achieved such success in a generally less popular genre without the help of a major record label, radio support, or large scale promotion. Their music spoke for itself.

All of these men are also better at music than I'll ever be. Especially the ones with hair.

There are plenty of groups like Periphery out there, striving to remain unique and true to themselves while still trying to gain popularity enough to make a living off of their music. But, due to the shape of the music industry today, this just isn't possible anymore. Huge record labels and widely sponsored popular artists make millions, while honest musicians just trying to make it playing what they love get choked out and have to rely on other means to support their music careers.

Here's where it all ties together. 


Popular music is like sludge. It's colorless, shapeless, has a disturbing consistency, and there's plenty of it to be had. It's consumed in small amounts no matter what you do or how hard you try to avoid it, and it's very easy to spread over a large area. You can tell people it's anything and everything you want them to think it is and they'll pay you for it. And it makes me ill.

Mmmm... sludge.

Honest, creative, inspired music is like ambrosia. It's valuable beyond words, difficult to get a hold of, and impossible not to crave once you've tasted of it. It is what it is, and is unmistakable when you find it. It can't be covered up and it can't be diluted. It's not for the faint of heart or the casual consumer, and once it has its hold on you, it changes you inside forever.

The Human Abstract - Digital Veil. Ambrosia.

Music today is either sludge or ambrosia, with very little middle ground between the two. Either it was made to be consumed by the masses, or it was made simply because the artist wanted to write it and it is consumed by the discerning. Either it belongs to the crowd, or it is kept apart from lesser mortals and reserved for those who can understand and appreciate it for what it is.


I hope to one day be able to stand proudly and say that I wrote and performed music that I wanted to play, and not that I sold out and played what would make me popular or liked the most. I want to listen to my own creations years and years down the road and still be proud of what I made. And it would be nice if I wasn't the only one still listening to my songs that far in the future, if my music had gotten under someone else's skin and lodged itself in their brain, if it meant something to them and inspired them, if it made any difference at all to anyone, if it was something more than just noise to even one person. Then I could say that I had been a success. It's not about the money or the fame or the fans or the lifestyle. It's about creating something you're proud of and wanting to share it with anyone willing to listen and appreciate it.

So, audience (who I only assume is still there because blogger continues to tell me I have more page views), what kind of listener are you, and what kind of music are you consuming? Do you believe that all music created to please the masses is sludge, or do you think i'm being harsh in my judgement of popular culture today? What kind of music do you think will still be around forty or fifty years from now, when our children's children are growing up and starting to really listen? Which artists do you think will look back and smile at what they've done, and which do you think will laugh in nervous embarrassment and wish you hadn't brought that album up? I know what I think. I want to hear what you think.

Egoism and Arrogance

Hello, audience. It's been a while since I've written last. A lot has transpired; much more than I'm willing to post willy-nilly all over the internet. Let's just say that the entire structure of my world has been collapsing at a pretty rapid pace lately, and it has changed things a lot. There has been lots of confusion and hurt going around, and it seems that i'm to blame for a lot of it. But, despite all of that, I still found the time to sit down and read. And the book I read, ladies and gents, is one of my very favorite books.

Can you guess?

It's this one.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Close to 700 pages of amazing literature that draws a picture of Rand's philosophy, egoism. Now, before you all freak out and call me an egotist, let me explain what egoism is.

The philosophy revolves around placing the self as the highest thing of value in your life. All of your decisions and choices, everything you do, revolves around what you want for yourself. The idea is that you remain true to yourself and stay in control of your own life by refusing to submit pointlessly to others wants and needs. An egoist does not feel obligated to help someone less fortunate, does not feel obligated to give others things they want, does not feel obligated to give up anything. Unless they want to do so. Everything depends on their personal opinion. If they do not want to give a beggar change, then no one can make them do it. No amount of guilt or sense of duty can make them change their mind. They will not be swayed by the opinions of others, unless they decide for themselves that it is the course they wish to take. Egoism is about freeing your decision making process from other people and taking it upon yourself.

The idea is that people today sell themselves out and try to be who other people want them to be. They spend all their time trying to look fashionable and watch the right movies and say the right things to fit in with the people around them. It's all about being who people want you to be so that they will like you. Public opinion decides who you are and who you'll be in the future. And it makes me sick to think about.

I've have worked for several years now on developing myself as a person, and as an individual, set aside from the public opinion mindset. I am by no means a pariah in this, as plenty of other people strive to do the same. I don't think this makes me special. I just think it makes all of us who choose to live by our own rules much smarter than the rest. Because we don't live to please others. We don't live to make other people feel happy or comfortable or content. We live to make ourselves happy, to do things that please us, that make us feel comfortable or content. And that's all that matters.

The Fountainhead is about a man named Howard Roark, a modern architect in a world that doesn't want to move forward. He is an architect because he loves buildings and designing structures. He designs buildings based not on what will look pretty or please the public, but based on what is the most efficient design for the building. The shape is created by the rooms, and the rooms are created by their purpose. The entire building is shaped and designed to fit a specific purpose, and only to meet that purpose. No added ornamentation or additions that have no actual purpose. He dropped out of school after he failed most of his classes for not completing the requirements of the assignments. He designed the buildings he wanted to rather than the ones the professors wanted him to, simply because he saw no point in it if he hated how they would turn out. Roark is driven completely and totally by his passion for architecture, and nothing else matters to him but what he wants. This is the image of the egoist.

"Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can't you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You're so serious, so old. Everything's important with you, everything's great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can't you ever be comfortable--and unimportant?"

"No."

-Peter Keating asking Howard Roark

On the opposite side is Peter Keating, another architect who designs exactly what people want. In fact, his entire purpose in life is to please other people so that they will like him. He wanted to be a painter, but instead, he became an architect in order to please his mother. He sucked up to all of his professors so they would like him, graduated head of his class, and joined a big firm so that he could become famous. Everything he says or does is to please someone else. His entire self is empty, containing only a mirror, because that's what he wants to be. Exactly what you want him to be. He relies on Roark's ability on many occasions, because Peter isn't good enough on his own, and he needs help from someone who is.

Peter is what Rand calls a Second-hander, someone whose lot in life is to feed off of the ability of another. All he knows is how to be a parasite and devour the fruits of someone else's labors. He does everything and anything he can to be liked, because he has no self-esteem. He derives his esteem entirely from what others give him, because without them, he would be nothing.

Roark is the Prime Mover, or the force that creates the world. He is one of many over thousands of years whose sole purpose was to find what they loved in life and to do it to the best of his ability. They are scientists, architects, musicians, industrialists, tradesmen, poets, authors, engineers, people who create things for the sole purpose of having created something. They do it because it brings them pleasure, not because anyone told them to or requires them to.

"I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean that he won't die some day. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict--and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment? But Howard--one can imagine him lasting forever." 

-Steven Mallory, about Howard Roark


The Second-handers feed off of the Prime Movers, taking their creations and using them for their own purposes. They can not create anything of their own, so they must take from those who can to survive. Otherwise, they are lost, and their world would end quickly. The Prime Movers are the reason they exist, because without someone to create or produce, the Second-handers wuold starve and die out.

Egoism is about doing what makes you happy, about finding something you really love and sticking to it, no matter what. Throughout the book, Roark faces hardships and trials that test his resolve, but through it all, he never wavers, never falters, and never gives a single inch in the face of adversity. He is solid all the way through to his core, and it is beyond anyone's ability to break him, or to even know where to start trying. And it's not that Roark finds it difficult to stick to what he believes and do what makes him happy. It's just his nature. He can't conceive of a person doing anything but exactly what makes them happy. He doesn't concern himself with impressing people who don't matter or changing himself to make others comfortable. He's completely arrogant, but is completely innocent about it, because he doesn't do it on purpose. It's just the way he is.

Needless to say, I admire the hell out of Howard Roark, and I want to be like him. I want to be so dedicated to what I want from life that no other person on the planet can ever drive me from my course. I want to live for me, to do the things that make me happy, to reach my highest potential in life, and do if for no other reason but that I wanted it. I don't want to live to please others or to meet their expectations. Damn their expectations. If I meet them, then it was by coincidence while on my way to please myself. That kind of passion and dedication would make me unbelievably happy.

Now the downside to all of this is that it's incredibly hard to do in real life. Roark, as a fictional character, was written to be hard and cold all the way through. But in most real people, being hard and cold isn't something that comes naturally, nor is it something most desire. Arrogance and egoism are considered undesirable traits. I'm still confounded as to why wanting to make yourself happy is a bad thing, though the decision to consider everyone else as less important unless determined otherwise by one's own mind is less mysteriously undesirable. It makes some small sense that people are offended when their opinion is not taken into consideration. 

Here's the deal, though: Nine times out of ten, I genuinely do not give a crap what anyone else has to say about what I think or say or do. Those things are my own personal business, and outside opinions have little to nothing to do with it. So I don't apologize for doing things my way or for thinking or saying what I want. It's my right as a human being. I won't tread lightly in order to keep from hurting someone's feelings, and I won't refrain from saying what I think when I deem it appropriate. Within reasonable bounds of common respect, I will hold my tongue. But not every minute of every day. As an INTP, my personality type makes up a very small portion of the population, and I am therefore outnumbered greatly in everyday life. This means that in all but a very select few social situations, I am expected to submit to the way other people would prefer things be done. I have to do things the way others want in order to keep them happy and pleasant. But that's just not how things are going to go.

I'm not going to submit every single time I am faced with another human being so that they can be comfortable. I'm going to continue being who I am and doing exactly whatever I want, and everyone else can get out of the way or get stepped on. It's not exactly a nice or polite way of doing things, but I never said I was either, and I never intended to be.

"Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic--and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand." 

-Howard Roark
That's about all I have to say for now, audience. The Being Angry portion came without notice at the end of my discussing Ayn Rand's wonderful book because I'm sick of always having to submit and it was time for me to yell about it. If you haven't read The Fountainhead, I recommend it, though only to those mature and understanding of you readers. It tends to be dense at points, and there are some controversial and complex themes running through the whole book that must be read with an open mind in order to be understood fully.

So, until next time, be whoever it is you want to be without question. Good day, audience.

Being. Just Being.

Hello, ever reading audience. Allow me to paint you a picture.

Imagine a place devoid of stress, worry, thought, understanding, and reason. A place where everything you want to be and everything you think you are comes to an end, and everything you are is made to feel complete. A place that allows you to stop trying and stop doing and stop everything and anything. You feel peace, resonating from inside you, a warmth and a comfort, as if this place had always been home and you had just returned from a long, long vacation. The feeling that nothing else in the world even matters or compares to the moment you are in now, and that no other thing or place in the world could ever match up. You have thoughts and worries and questions, but they can't touch you, as if they're on the other side of a wall of glass. You're detached, but aware. You know that life is still there, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't hold sway, it has no gravity. Because the life you've been living is just a facade, a bad replica of the way you feel now. It's but a reflection of a shadow of a dream. In this place, time slows to the perfect speed, where it's moving slowly enough that you get to draw the enjoyment of every second out, but quickly enough that you know that it is really happening. Everything else comes to a halt, and you just are. You're just alive. You're just being.

 Have you ever felt like that before? That still, and yet full of life? It's not something many people can say they've experienced. It's a feeling unlike any other you can conceive of. Everything in the universe just feels right, and you think that all the pain and sadness faced in life is worth feeling like that, if even for a moment. In that moment, everything lines up perfectly and you let go of everything and anything. You lose yourself in it, immersing yourself in it, basking even.

But all things must come to an end, and you can see the end of this one from a mile away. You dread it, because you don't remember how reality feels and you don't want to remember. You just want to stay put and never have to move, or breathe, or feel anything else ever again. But you know you have to, and you let the peace you've felt walk you right up to that line. And then you stand there, time slamming to a halt for a final second, and you realize where you are and where you're about to be again, and you have that one last contented sigh, and then you let go. You stare that moment in the face, and then you let go.

"...it's like I've been sleeping underwater..."

And then reality hits you. Sometimes its solid, like a wave in the ocean. It's massive and unstoppable, and it washes over you and knocks you flat on your back and carries you away. And other times, it's slow and subtle, like a cooling sensation that starts at your fingertips and slowly but surely fills you with that familiar sensation of having just woken up, where everything is fuzzy at the edges. In either case, you're not sure whether or not it really happened, and the feeling falls more and more out of touch over time.

So you're back in reality, and you remember having that dream, you remember how real it felt while you were there, and you'd give anything to be back there again. Life isn't as easy as it seemed while you were dreaming, when you could still feel that alive, and you just want to throw all of the bad parts out the window and hide somewhere cozy and warm and pretend that life isn't happening. You sink back into your "the future scares the living hell out of me" fetal position and you stay there until you fall asleep.

'Just Being' is the feeling that I think everyone in the universe would sell their souls for. It's the kind of thing that you bottle up and peddle like a drug lord, getting everyone addicted and then slowly but surely taking control of their lives and twisting their disposable income to your own use.

 

This could totally be my life, if I could just figure out how to bottle up that feeling...

Does anyone else know what I'm talking about? Or have I just had the most unreal few weeks of my life and no one will ever be able to relate? Because, honestly, I think that's something I could really get used to. I'm selfish like that. Until next time, audience.