Music & Me: An Interlude

An interlude is not usually months in length, but I’ve been a little busy and haven’t gotten back to my story about why I hate music. But this evening, while entertaining my 1 year old daughter with YouTube videos, I thought I’d check out Adele’s new release and I was not disappointed. The few minutes I spent helped me get at what I think is my reasons for hating music…

Namely, it used to inspire great passion in me but no longer does.

That is a very difficult thought to come to grips with, but it is there all the same. Its not that I’m a curmudgeon who believes music is so much worse today than it was back in my day; in fact, I would say music has become a greater part of our culture than it ever has been simply by its abundance and ease of access. Just because the music that is popular is not something which I find to be entertaining or fulfilling should not in any way imply that the music is in any real way less than the music which was popular in my younger years.

Yet the music of today, even something as beautiful as Adele’s latest, fails to substantially move me in any way that the music of my youth moved me. What it did do, however, is to point out how much it didn’t move me, even though I believe that it should have done so. This is not to say the music is at fault; quite the contrary, the problem here is me.

I believe that 20 years ago, I would have been weeping in a puddle on the floor at hearing that for the first (or fiftieth) time. It really is a beautiful song. What has so dramatically changed within me that, while I can still recognize the power within music to move, it still leaves me unmoved.

Whenever I get around to pulling together my thoughts on music’s impact on my life, I think we’ll start to see the many reasons music fails to move me as it once did.