Gryzemuis on 22/10/2019 at 13:15
Quote Posted by Gray
it made my whole life so much better listening to whiny songs by
When I was around 20 years old, I listened to Joy Division and bands that are now considered "goth". What others would call "depressing music". But I wasn't feeling sad or depressed at all. And the music did not impact my mood or the way I looked at life. Basically I've always thought: "the world sucks, but my life is not that bad". I still feel that way. Music has nothing to do with that.
If I had to pick a word to describe my own state of mind, I might pick the word: melancholic. The music, films, books, games I like best often have a strong melancholic tone. (E.g. my favorite games-series is now Dark Souls). But I was melancholic first. And I pick the music, films, etc that fit with my taste. It's not the other way around. It's not that melancholic music sets my mood or determines my taste in other things.
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Some songs were even pivotal making the most important decision in my entire life, of giving up my whole life in Sweden, moving to Scotland and marry the most amazing person I ever met. Music did that. SONGS did that. Really, really good songs that meant a lot to us both.
Music made you fall in love with a girl in Scotland ? Music made you move ? OK. But I would think it's more likely it was the girl that made you fall in love and made you move ?
I can think of one decision that I made in my life, where music comes into play. As seen from my top-10 albums, I like Tuxedomoon. Tuxedomoon originally came from city X in the US. All their members moved to city Y in Europe around 1981. I once or twice visited city Y when I was a student, only because Tuxedomoon had lived there. In 1994 I was unemployed, I had almost ran out of money. I needed a job. I saw a job for a company called "X". And the job was in "Y". So I applied for the job, got hired, and moved to another country. Best decision I ever made. I even lived about 50 meters away from a theater/bar where the Tuxedomoon guys used to hang out (not when I lived there, but years earlier). Both Steven Brown and Blaine Reininger did a concert in that bar when I was living there. Pretty cool. I moved back to NL in the end because I didn't spoke the language (and didn't want to learn it).
So music had an impact on that decision. But I didn't make the decision because of music. I made the decision myself. Because I liked city Y. Because I liked the product from company X. Music was only "decoration". Coincidence.
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listening to awesome bands growing up triggered an interest in me making music of my own.
I listened to a lot of music. I did think about making music myself. In 1996 or so, I bought a saxophone. Never felt the urge to play on it. In 2002 I took a few lessons to learn to play it. Then I realized that playing a musical instrument is 100% against my personality. I like new things. I like to know things. Understand things. I like ideas. Concepts. I enjoy going into something new, play with it, understand it, and then move to something else new. Playing an instrument is 100% the opposite. You get a new instrument, you learn a little bit about music, just enough to get you started. And then you repeat and rehearse the same song(s), until you "it is in your fingers". And then you take another piece of music, which is only slightly different, and you rehearse that for a few weeks/months. So the "new"-part is short, and the "repeat"-part is long. Not for me.
We've all seen musicians play the same songs 40-50 years after they wrote them. That must be hell. It's already hell for me if I have to listen to an old Rolling Stones song, it must be 100x worse to actually be a Rolling Stone yourself. :)
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I was afraid of everything
I'm not afraid of anything. Maybe that's the difference. Just like alcohol can make you do things you normally don't dare to do. I'm not scared of anything, so I never needed alcohol. I really dislike the feeling of being "tipsy". (I've felt it a little after 2 or 3 Sambucas. My max ever. Thank God I've never been drunk). So I also never needed music to overcome shyness.
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I reject fashion on multiple levels
You're not the only one.
I think the whole "non-music" aspect of some musical cultures always made me feel I wasn't really part of any of those cultures. I'm not a Goth, I'm not a punk, I'm certainly not a hippy. Lots of music has its own fashion. I don't like that. Although people might put me in a certain category, because I always dress in black. Maybe that's why I liked New Wave at the time. New Wave had all kinds of different music, different styles, different people. Their link was "being new". Anything goes, as long as it was original. There certainly wasn't a dress-code, like there is with hippies, heavy metal, grunge, even punk, and many other styles of music.
Oh, there is one thing where I was influenced by a musician.
When I saw The Cramps live, (
http://sardineandtobleroni.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/1/3/25135068/9779383_orig.png) Lux Interior was wearing awesome boots.
At the time I did buy similar boots ((
https://shop-laarzen.nl/media/catalog/product/cache/4/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/6/1692_cuervo_pull-oil-negro_3-edit_10.jpg) Mexican, half-high, pointy nose, always black).
And I've always kept buying new, similar boots.
Women hate them. I've been told many times I should buy "normal shoes". I won't. :) Wearing simple black cloth, and wearing these boots, is who I am. Lux is dead. But his boots are alive. :)
I also don't like tattoos. I never wear clothes with a brand visible. I hate expensive cloths (except my boots, they're not cheap). I never wear t-shirts with print. Just like you, I am very unique here, just as unique as hunderds of thousands of others. :)
You might associate that with music. With the punk attitude. Or with alternative music. But for me, I'd rather link it with computers. Because I understand slightly better what computers can do (and what the large companies are doing indeed), I value privacy very much. I want that when people look at me, they can not say anything about me, by judging my looks. So that's why I want my cloth to be minimalistic. Oh, and (
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1925) rule 12 does not apply only to network protocols, but to everything.
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In everything, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.Dr Martens boots are good. I never bought a pair myself when I was young. Way too expensive. But later in life, at one point I was a week in London. 7 Days of rain, 24 hours/day. My leather boots were soaked. After walking around for 2 days with wet feet, I caved in. I bought a pair of Dr. Martens boots. The last few days of that week I had dry feet. It's ok to buy them, if they are practical.
I bought the boots because I saw this when I was 18.
[video=youtube;_Eq8TOiqkCM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Eq8TOiqkCM[/video]
Sulphur on 24/10/2019 at 03:28
Hark, a hedonistic nihilist.
I'm not going to say your opinion is wrong, because there's some (god help me) truthiness to parts of it; but I am going to say that, as with most people who subscribe to a viewpoint on life that narrows down to a single truth, your opinion isn't particularly right, complete, or even meaningful when applied to other people. While it may work for you, for the rest of us there are other reasons to listen to music or consume art than mere escapism.
PigLick on 24/10/2019 at 04:05
also music is more than art, it was the beginning of the first langauges.
demagogue on 24/10/2019 at 05:01
If you want to start going whole hog down this line, Adorno wrote The Culture Industry where the basic punchline was that "art" and "culture" were being reduced to entertainment commodities, basically one more way for the powermakers to exploit the little guy, disposable music that appeals to our most base instincts since that's what makes the best return and keeps the public rabble compliant. And the artists making the music get chewed up by the machine along the way, pushed to kick out that kind of music and not develop their own voice.
I'm no communist or anything, but I can feel when music is trying to squeeze a quick and vacuous rush (and buck) out of me, and it's a let down. I'm not saying inacessible opera, progrock, or bebop have to be the only solution and only music with meaning, but I appreciate when a musician challenges the listener a little and takes them to a place that's maybe a little uncomfortable at first, but it makes them grow in the confrontation.
Gray on 24/10/2019 at 21:57
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
melancholic
That is the one word that describes our whole national character. It's the one thing we do better than almost everybody else. I certainly have more than my fair share of that.
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
But I was melancholic first. And I pick the music, films, etc that fit with my taste. It's not the other way around. It's not that melancholic music sets my mood or determines my taste in other things.
This is a very important plot point in the Nick Hornby novel (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Fidelity_(novel)) High Fidelity. Are we depressed because we listen to depressing music, or are we listening to depressing music because we are depressed? (For once, there was an (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Fidelity_(film)) American movie that even managed to do the novel justice, even though they changed the setting and music. I'd highly recommend both. Book first, though.)
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Music made you move ?
Yes. It started out as an online friendship, we'd send music to each other, slowly falling in love. Music was extremely important. She loved some of my favourite bands. If this had not happened, it would not have gone past friendship. But she got it. She understood it, all of it, and it showed me we had more in common than I thought. And songs that I had listened to for years took on a whole new level of importance. They became "our songs". They amplified our emotions. We met up in person, and later when we were apart, playing song so-and-so would remind the both of us of the time we spent together.
And apart from that, I drew strength from certain songs to help me decide whether or not I would be making a massive terrible mistake to give up my whole life and move to some weird foreign country. The whole idea scared the shit out of me, so I actively sought out songs I knew to help me decide. Through every step of the process, music was very important. Just the right song to nudge me in just the right direction. I moved. It was the best decision I ever made.
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
I once or twice visited city Y when I was a student, only because Tuxedomoon had lived there.
That was the only reason I visited Düsseldorf, to briefly stand outside the Kling Klang studio, where Kraftwerk worked. I don't usually do music pilgrimages, but Kraftwerk has shaped quite a large chunk of my life, so I felt I had to do it. I mean, I've been to Manchester and London and Berlin for music, and would love to go to Vancouver and Seattle, but it wouldn't be a pilgrimage as such. Being at Kling Klang was special. Naturally, I listened to (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMVokT5e0zs) Trans Europe Express while riding the train to Düsseldorf. While there, I never actually did anything, just stood quietly outside the building, thinking to myself that this is where it all happened. Only for a few minutes. And then I met up with Daxim and we got drunk on Laphroaig, or at least I did, I can't remember if he even tasted it.
Point being, I didn't go there to meet or see a brief glance of Hütter or Schneider, I just wanted to get a feel of what the place was like and absorb the atmosphere. If I had bumped into them, they'd probably have ignored me, as they don't interact with fans, which would have been completely fine by me, I wouldn't have wanted to interact with them either. I don't want to meet the people I listen to, I just assume that most of them are, while talented musicians, complete jerks in real life. I don't want to take a photo with them or become their friend, I'm not 12 anymore and I don't idolise anybody. I just appreciate what they do and try to understand it.
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
I'm not afraid of anything.
Another point where we differ. I had fear quite literally beaten into me at age ten, and was quite badly bullied for many many years. Music has helped me overcome this fear, to some extent, but I'm never gonna be a happy fun cheerful guy. That ended in 1981. [Edit] As I grew up, I got over the fear and anger, and got pretty comfortable with my life. Quite happy, calm, peaceful. The kind of guy I want to be. But as my insomnia worsened, it became much more difficult for me to deal with the world, and the fear came back. For some 20-odd years I was doing alright, but I'm now falling back into fear, confusion, and a lack of control and understanding. This is all illness related, I understand that, if I could get back to sleeping properly I'd be much more capable of dealing with the world. Now, everything just scares me, partly because I'm in a strange new place with more crime and violence than I'm used to, partly because my awareness and adaptation is not working as it should in a healthy person. If my brain was working, I'd probably love the adventure of living here, with so much new stuff to explore. Alas, that is not the case.
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Dr Martens boots are good. I never bought a pair myself when I was young. Way too expensive. But later in life, at one point I was a week in London. 7 Days of rain, 24 hours/day. My leather boots were soaked. After walking around for 2 days with wet feet, I caved in. I bought a pair of Dr. Martens boots. The last few days of that week I had dry feet. It's ok to buy them, if they are practical.
I bought the boots because I saw this when I was 18.
[video=youtube;_Eq8TOiqkCM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Eq8TOiqkCM[/video]
Well, I'll consider it, if they're practical enough, but I somehow see it as a personal failure and bowing down to a cliché. However, since I have a ticket to go see Nitzer Ebb next month, I'm pretty sure I won't be the only cliche there.
Quote Posted by demagogue
I appreciate when a musician challenges the listener a little and takes them to a place that's maybe a little uncomfortable at first, but it makes them grow in the confrontation.
Yes. Many of my now favourite bands, I hated at first listen. Others, I sort of liked, but it took me years to fully understand. If something is instantly enjoyable, I tend to lose interest just as quickly as well. This is not always true, some cheap, simple stuff from 30 years ago I still like, but perhaps that's just nostalgia.