A few thoughts on music

ON A SERIOUS NOTE:

I used music to define who I was for most of my high school and early college life. It wasn't just that I listened to songs and appreciated them, I found songs that, at least for a moment, completely summed up my beliefs. Laugh if you might, but I physical shook with emotion when I heard songs like "Disenchanted" by My Chemical Romance or "Illusion" by VNV Nation.

The problem is that a song never changes, but a human being, particularly a young adult, changes constantly. I found myself actively avoiding change when it clashed with the scriptures of my music. Alternatively, I tried to change myself to better understand lyrics that I loved but couldn't yet relate with.

Now, it's rare that I find an album that moves me.

ON A LESS SERIOUS NOTE:

I listen to parodies and remixes far more than can be good for me. Maybe it was an early introduction to Weird Al or my family's love for Zucker films, but nothing is funnier to me than a redo with a silly twist.

In fact, I often see parody as the higher form of art than the original, because a good parody is not merely a copy or a mockery: It captures the heart of the initial creation, while also building and expanding upon it.

ON A RELATED TOPIC:

A friend of mine is letting me rip a compilation that's basically a brief history of gothic music, Joy Division to Skinny Puppy, The Cure to AFI. It's amazing how many of the songs I've heard covers of (such as Kerli's version of "She's in Parties," by Bauhaus) or seen as an explanation of how a band I like sounds ("They sound sort of like if Clan of Xymox and Dead Can Dance played in a cover band of the Misfits, with vocals by Cocteau Twins").

I like to be reminded every now and then that everything has been done before, but never quite exactly the same way.

More on that later.

ON A SOMEWHAT PERVERSE NOTE:

Entertainment is mostly a spectrum of sex and violence. On the one end, you'll find something like One Hundred and One Dalmatians. In includes the birth of puppies (and, by definition, copulation), two human beings falling in love, the threatened death and skinning of the dogs and plenty of slapstick humor. On the other end of the spectrum lies hardcore pornography and graphic, senseless depictions of death and torture.

I used to joke that taste was the main consideration for why people watched one and not the other. As society became increasingly lax about explicit content and entertainers tried to top each other's attempts to shock viewers, I said, pop culture would eventually fall into a "pornography singularity" where the only entertainment produced would be obscenity interspersed with Coca-Cola ads.

"Ha ha ha," people would say.

BUT THEN:

Have you actually seen the video for Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" or Christina Aguilera's "Not Myself Tonight"?

It's not funny anymore; it's true.