the art of making music that isn't art.
there is something i've never been able to express regarding my place with music. i'm wanting to retrieve myself as much as possible from the patterns of today's musical standards. i'm disgusted with today's music world, a world of money and popularity. the majority of musicians today are only involved with music as a means to an end. though they apparently enjoy music to some extent, it is not the music for which they're involved. they are involved only for some self-centered personal intent. each musician is individual in his level of devotion to the music itself. i am nowhere near where i want to be regarding this issue, but i am confident in my passions and believe i will be able to stand against this world of musical vanity.
i shouldn't compare my musical vision to the vision or lack of vision of other musicians. my music is my own, it is my art. my music is my expression, it is my painting. my music is my voice. my music is my prayer.
my music is not an education that will later provide me a comfortable, well-paid career. my music is not my career, that came from an expensive education and pays me well. my music is my enjoyment, it is what i want to spend my time doing. i want my motives to be pure, free of agenda. i want to write music for its beauty's sake.
like many other areas of life, i hope i have trained myself, or have been trained, so that when the options are presented, a decision is required, i won't have to figure out what it is that i believe to make my decision. my decisions are pre-decided. there is less room for mistakes when you have made pre-decisions. i am talking about if i ever had to make a decision regarding my music. i have to ask myself now...why do i play music? why do i write music? --- i have to decide now where i will allow my music to go. i want to have this viewpoint regarding my music...how much can i hide it, keep it secret? this is very similar to how i feel about Christ Jesus. i want to share my music with the world through films in hollywood, why? because i believe in it, it affects me, and i want to share that. i want people to be affected. i want meaning to defeat vanity in the heart of each person. but it is just that, i don't want to share Christ so that people know i'm a christian. i don't want to share my music so that people know that it is mine. i want to share Christ because of what he can do in the human heart, and i want to share my music because of the beauty i find in it, and i believe it can affect others similarly.
i feel very hypocritical now. i am a hypocrite in fact. but this is a discussion for myself to learn what it is that's in my head. so i'll continue.
tonight i had a discussion with two of my favorite people. it was about the importance of the existence of artists, current and ancient. it began when raeanna asked brody if he knew who Van Gogh is...brody, of course, didn't know. she was astonished, even disgusted at this, and that is how the wonderful discussion started. we ended up comparing classical musicians such as Beethoven and Mozart with current pop artists such as The Beatles (current?), U2, and pop-culture music in general. Raeanna argues that the classical artists changed the world and that current artists will have no such impact (there is debate whether that is actually what she intended to say or not --- please feel welcome to respond to this to clarify your point Rae...), but brody and i believe quite strongly that though we may not approve of how today's music is having an impact, it is indeed changing the course of music's relation to life for many centuries to come (if the centuries do continue...) ---
that may have been hard to understand. simply, i do not support where music is at this moment. mtv is disgusting, television shows such as american idol, or "supernova"---(my family watches it religiously, i hate it.) music as a form of entertainment is demeaning to the idea of music as an art-form. lyrics in music have replaced the music of music. music is a repeated structure of familiar melodies, all for alternate purposes. political, selfish, religious, financial, sexual motives are the purpose of so much of today's music, it's disgusting. this is so real that i sometimes feel a presumption from people that i am a musician for one of the above purposes. and maybe it is true that beethoven was only a musician in order to please his father --- (remember story of father beating his son if he made a mistake on the piano...through the night...slapping his hands at one rhythmic falsity, one unwritten note played...punisment.) --- mozart was only a musician in order to be accepted by a certain class of people. These are only hypothetical ideas in order to explore a possibility. maybe i am wrongfully assuming that classical music is more pure as an art-form because it is lyric-less or more beautiful than most of today's music. maybe it is only that the motives of musicians 200 years ago were different motives than the motives of today's musicians...maybe all musicians use music as a means to an end.
currently reading "Perelandra" by C.S. Lewis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis
i shouldn't compare my musical vision to the vision or lack of vision of other musicians. my music is my own, it is my art. my music is my expression, it is my painting. my music is my voice. my music is my prayer.
my music is not an education that will later provide me a comfortable, well-paid career. my music is not my career, that came from an expensive education and pays me well. my music is my enjoyment, it is what i want to spend my time doing. i want my motives to be pure, free of agenda. i want to write music for its beauty's sake.
like many other areas of life, i hope i have trained myself, or have been trained, so that when the options are presented, a decision is required, i won't have to figure out what it is that i believe to make my decision. my decisions are pre-decided. there is less room for mistakes when you have made pre-decisions. i am talking about if i ever had to make a decision regarding my music. i have to ask myself now...why do i play music? why do i write music? --- i have to decide now where i will allow my music to go. i want to have this viewpoint regarding my music...how much can i hide it, keep it secret? this is very similar to how i feel about Christ Jesus. i want to share my music with the world through films in hollywood, why? because i believe in it, it affects me, and i want to share that. i want people to be affected. i want meaning to defeat vanity in the heart of each person. but it is just that, i don't want to share Christ so that people know i'm a christian. i don't want to share my music so that people know that it is mine. i want to share Christ because of what he can do in the human heart, and i want to share my music because of the beauty i find in it, and i believe it can affect others similarly.
i feel very hypocritical now. i am a hypocrite in fact. but this is a discussion for myself to learn what it is that's in my head. so i'll continue.
tonight i had a discussion with two of my favorite people. it was about the importance of the existence of artists, current and ancient. it began when raeanna asked brody if he knew who Van Gogh is...brody, of course, didn't know. she was astonished, even disgusted at this, and that is how the wonderful discussion started. we ended up comparing classical musicians such as Beethoven and Mozart with current pop artists such as The Beatles (current?), U2, and pop-culture music in general. Raeanna argues that the classical artists changed the world and that current artists will have no such impact (there is debate whether that is actually what she intended to say or not --- please feel welcome to respond to this to clarify your point Rae...), but brody and i believe quite strongly that though we may not approve of how today's music is having an impact, it is indeed changing the course of music's relation to life for many centuries to come (if the centuries do continue...) ---
that may have been hard to understand. simply, i do not support where music is at this moment. mtv is disgusting, television shows such as american idol, or "supernova"---(my family watches it religiously, i hate it.) music as a form of entertainment is demeaning to the idea of music as an art-form. lyrics in music have replaced the music of music. music is a repeated structure of familiar melodies, all for alternate purposes. political, selfish, religious, financial, sexual motives are the purpose of so much of today's music, it's disgusting. this is so real that i sometimes feel a presumption from people that i am a musician for one of the above purposes. and maybe it is true that beethoven was only a musician in order to please his father --- (remember story of father beating his son if he made a mistake on the piano...through the night...slapping his hands at one rhythmic falsity, one unwritten note played...punisment.) --- mozart was only a musician in order to be accepted by a certain class of people. These are only hypothetical ideas in order to explore a possibility. maybe i am wrongfully assuming that classical music is more pure as an art-form because it is lyric-less or more beautiful than most of today's music. maybe it is only that the motives of musicians 200 years ago were different motives than the motives of today's musicians...maybe all musicians use music as a means to an end.
currently reading "Perelandra" by C.S. Lewis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis
posted by andrew at 13:45
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home