>and the thread
>explodes with bickering by people who like it but just can't
>accept that not everyone has the same tastes, and rather than
>actually discuss the music and say what they like about it,
>set up their soap box and call other people wrong.

I've been thinking a lot about this predictability lately, as you put it. My internet access is patchy right now but will come back for deeper dive, but suffice to say that the stalemate is real, for both those who like artist/album/song X and those that dislike X... and while I don't think it's a *new* issue and has deeper roots in how we relate to art and each other more generally, I do think there are some peculiarities with our current cultural moment that exacerbate our worst/shallowest tendencies when we try to talk about music (and art more generally).

There are no easy solutions but there are a few key acknowledgments that can help:

1) Recognize that my viewpoint does not automatically preclude the possibility of other viewpoints. This does not change just because something really, really, really moves me to love or hate. I can love something, and someone else can hate it, and neither perspective is inherently a reflection of the quality of the listener and their taste.

2) Recognize that although discussion re: music varies in purpose and quality, my goal should not be persuasive or competitive in nature but rather a sharing of experience and viewpoints. I benefit from learning why you like X and vice versa. I benefit, too, from hearing how you approach music more generally, whether that involves technical musical detail, emotional resonance, or personal stories. The goal, if we can reduce discussion to one goal, should be an augmentation of appreciation and understanding. Argumentation, when held in the right spirit, can help achieve that goal -- but it can also quickly narrow and shrink the possibilities of a conversation to their shallowest point.

3) There is no right way to approach music -- but there is a technical language involving music that, as with any domain of skill and knowledge, can help us build a particular type of understanding of music as music (so far as that may be a possibility). We should not be fooled into thinking that music theory or related ways of analyzing music are objective; they are not. They do, however, provide a means for talking about music using a shared language close to the subject itself - a language, in other words, that is not objective but not wholly subjective, either, and thus has a type of usefulness that the absolutely subjective may not. (I am speaking here of objectivity and subjectivity in relative terms - neither is ever purely one or the other.)

4) Following #3, the more we can talk about music with an eye toward the music, the better foundation we build for conversations that are actually productive - for we at least share a set of terms that we can use to understand each other and the music itself. But because "music itself" is a non-existent thing - because the artist, culture, context is inseparable from the music - our understanding of what it means to talk about music as music must necessarily be capacious. If we negotiate these contradictions with generosity and imagination, what it means to talk about music as music will likely be something entirely different from what we expect or assume it should be... and it will be all the more enriching as a result.
----
Have to go - but I have at least one more mini-sermon on humility to include here --- so will return!


-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~