Subject: Re: Kurt Cobain
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Mon Jan 03 2000 - 22:05:29 EST
In a message dated 1/3/00 9:42:31 PM Eastern Standard Time,
martincaulfield@yahoo.com writes:
> My point is I HATE MUSIC!!!! Okay hate is a little
> strong, I should say "it's not right but it's okay."
> But why is the world having a love affair with music?
> If you can pick between books and music, why do people
> pick music? I don't get it. I really don't.
First off, we don't have to pick between books and music. Everyone here
talking about music seems to have a bit of interest in Salinger or they
wouldn't have subscribed to this list :)
But it's a bit of a mistake to lump all music together, like it's a mistake
to lump all books together. It'd be like saying, "How can you like reading
Salinger? I've read Danielle Steele and think she's banal and shallow."
But it's not a mistake I don't entirely understand. I think music and books
appeal to two different faculties. Body and mind, respectively. Music is
more of a visceral experience while books are more cognitive. I'm not saying
that books can't evoke emotion, of course, but books speak to the mind and
through the mind affect our emotions, while music speaks to the emotions and
through our emtions affects our minds.
All our great literature, if you go back far enough, is musical in quality.
Our first literature was always poetry - the Greek tragedies (Nieztche said
that tragedy was born from the union of these two impulses -- mind and body),
the Semitic creation stories, the Upanishads, you name it. And that's what
our Cobains and Morrisons and Dylans and Lennons...and on and on...are. They
are our poets. We like these guys BECAUSE we like literature, not instead of
liking literature.
Jim
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