Nov 19, 2012

The Undercover Philistine

Sometime music is very frustrating. It is like foreplay gone awry. Sometimes I discover little nuggets, some piano masterpieces that frustrate me no end. I stop everything I am doing to listen to it over and over again. I give in to the deceptively calm opening tinkle. Close my eyes and fall back hoping to sink into a cushioned place only to find myself falling. In shock, I realize the piece is not calming at all. It is stormy, it is is frenzied and evocative of something. What exactly? What is it trying to evoke in me? I can feel the composer's, the pianists, the arranger's, the video uploader's, everyone's desperation. They are all trying to tell me something What is it? I don't understand this emotion that they are trying to get across. I am feeling something, but I don't even know what it is. It is like clawing at a smooth glass wall.
Then begins the long process of playing it in the background while hunting around the internet  Searches on the composer's name, his life, the time in his life when he composed this piece etc. Then piecing together that long gone corpse's life and trying to understand what he is trying to communicate here. Listening to the piece again from that perspective, but again feeling frustrated since I don't understand.
Then panic sets in. What if I am unfeeling? What if art and music evoke nothing in me? Could it be that I am a Philistine? If I am, I must at least try and appear unlike one to all human observation. Then in a desperate attempt, I find reviews on the particular piece of music and try and form my opinion based on other clever people's opinions.
Here too I exercise cunning, read conflicting reviews to know every possible opinion about it and then I go with something the character called Myself would probably choose to go with.
Is it worth it? So what if I did not get this or all of this or even all of the music in the world? Would it be the end of me? Even if my mind were not developed at all, would my body still not appreciate the world of sensuous pleasure? Is that not enough?