Thursday, July 24, 2008

Music

Man of constant sorrow - the chords if you will.
The Soggy Bottom Boys share a mike but not this time.
Percy Plant and Ali Kraus and a small guitar.

The music we make is not necessarily the music we'd want to make. It's what comes out as the result of an informal and illogical process that we can't quite define. The connections that are made are somehow greater than the sum of the parts and the end result is always a surprise, sometimes a disappointment and seldom what we intended. It can be strange and strangely beautiful, we are on the cusp of opportunity thanks to the development of sympathetic and affordable technology and wah wah pedals. I like these happy accidents.

Perhaps I now believe in God, but then like Annie Hall I also think that there are little people inside the radio making it work.

I have an ambivalent relationship with music, much of the time it bores me, then I need to listen to Abba or King Crimson or Miles Davis or Johnny Cash and I can't really tell why. Like the need for a food or a drink my tastes change as I veer from needing the familiar and seeking out the unfamiliar and unexpected. At other times it simply passes the time and covers the drone of the tyres on the motorway, it's more than love/hate or love/tolerate, it is unrequited and unreasonable and odd. Music styles and forms are not my special lovers and I enjoy being unfaithful with other foreign forms for no particular reason. The discovery of the quick chill on the soul of a glass of rose wine has had no effect on this situation either as the notes run across the gap between the headphones, the one that I fill so well.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous11:28 PM

    Nice quote from Plato:

    “music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.”

    Cheers Paul

    ReplyDelete