compulsive compartmentalization

I have found myself shying away from discussions about music lately. Which is unfortunate because not only do I love music, I am a musician. For a long time I wasn’t sure exactly why I have felt uncomfortable when people start discussing the music they like, but I think now I’ve nailed down at least part of the reason:

I’m a big friggin’ coward.

There, I said it. But that’s just the first part of my little self-revelation. I used to spend the majority of my spare time writing and arranging music. I took a couple years of music theory in college for the fun of it (which earned me puzzled looks from others in my class who found out that I wasn’t a music major…music theory isn’t very popular.) Yep…I was a music geek. It’s interesting to me that at that time art wasn’t really high on my list of priorities. These days it’s the other way around…which makes me sad. A friend of mine suggested that the reason this makes me sad is because I might have gotten some of my identity from music, and that I’m scared of losing that. I had never really thought of that before, but I think it’s true.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this creative period in my life now where I’m really developing my skills as an artist (after all, now I’m “Artist”-Brian…whoohoo!…look at me! [that's sarcasm]) But I do long for balance.

But there’s another peice of this stupid little puzzle: In addition to the fear of losing some of my “identity”, art, to me, is safer than music. Let me explain…

Everyone who has ears and can hear also has an opinion about music. Regardless of the objective validity of anything they say, they say things anyway. What I mean by that is that most people are unable or unwilling to distinguish between music that’s well written/performed, and what their preferences are. If most people made that distinction in their discussion, then I don’t think I would have such a hard time. “That sucks” usually means “I don’t like that.” Whether or not the music actually sucks is another matter altogether, and one that the casual music listener (usually) doesn’t seem able or willing to admit. I guess the reason for this is how accessible music is and how we seem to instinctively have a sense of ownership over the music we love. It’s everywhere. In the background, the foreground, our cars, our homes, our dentist offices, our public bathrooms, our bookstores…if there’s enough airspace for the sound waves to form, we’ll pipe music in. Art, on the other hand isn’t everywhere. You don’t drive down the highway looking at pictures. Well, you can, but then you’re just setting yourself up for the business end of a process called “natural selection”.

What I’m saying is that average joe on the street usually won’t have a firmly held opinion about art like he would about music. Which, in my cowardly mentality, makes it a safe thing to talk about openly. I’m not likely to get in a heated discussion about figure drawing and color schemes. There are always exceptions, of course, but as a rule it’s just not going to happen outside of a comic book convention or message board.

So I withdraw from discussions on music and groups (except around my musician friends, who I feel comfortable enough around to get into a debate with) and feel strangely like an outsider when the conversation heads in that direction.

So what do I do with this new insight? I dunno. I know where my identity truly comes from, so I suppose that’s just a matter of prayer and renewing the mind. Words that are easily typed but harder to execute in reality. As for the cowardice…I suppose I just need to suck it up, dive in, and not be ashamed of my tastes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 at 10:04 am and is filed under Life, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.