Healing Our Musical
Wounds
Now that we know the problem, somebody has to think of a solution. The
following paragraphs that you will be reading here are my personal assessment
and advice to you, reader. I will still grab ideas from the intellectual giants
I admire and respect, but they will be conjoined with my conclusions here.
Learn to listen
Once again, pop music is a mere background sound, that’s why people can
“listen” to it without actually paying attention. This is another good summary
of the modern life: a life that doesn’t pay attention, because it’s busy doing
its own work.
This is something we should never practice when it comes to music. We
should be eager to listen. Stop caring about the pop star or the performer and
pay attention. While doing so, ask yourself: what is this song trying to tell
me? What is it trying to tell the world? How should I react? (This also means
not caring much about music videos, because however much you try to focus on
the music when you watch them, the scenery drags you away from the experience
you want to achieve. We can also say the same thing with regards to stage
performances of pop stars. Have you seen some live performances of groups like,
say, Spice Girls or TWICE? They look like a bunch of Delilahs seducing the
world filled with Samsons. Once again, that is the plan anyway.)[i]
Once again, music always conveys a message, which reflects the mind of
a musician (remember, effects resemble their cause in one way or another),
which enables us to decipher their intentions: are they making music for
beauty’s sake? Or do they value profit more? Do they even understand the
implications of the music they just released? Can this music help build up or
demolish culture?
Notice that learning to listen also allows you to think critically, for
to listen opens to analysis. We may not all be professional philosophers, but
all of us are rational, and we have no excuse in not using properly our minds
unless one is mentally ill. Listening improves our way of thinking, because in
doing so we absorb new ways of information through music. This leads us to
point number two.
Learn to Compare
There’s a wonderful quote attributed to St. Augustine[ii]:
“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger
and courage; anger at the way things are, and
courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
What we need now is for us – sane people, culture warriors, modern-day
crusaders, civilians of the republic of the red-pilled – to hope. Hope, as we know, is virtue[iii].
But people today have a false sense of hope. For many today, hope is just
another term for “let’s just sit down, be optimistic and wait for a nice ending
for everything”. This is not hope. This is rather foolishness.
The true hopeful is a fighter. “But why should we fight?”, you might
ask. The answer is: it is because we are in a war.
“In a war?” Yes, what I’ve said might probably shock you. But all you
need is to look back at what you’ve read. There’s an obvious attack on beauty,
art, orderliness, and virtue. The battle is now intense between the Logos and
the anti-Logos. For us to lose this war is to just let souls get dragged into
hellfire, or (if you’re not religious enough to appreciate that) to let our
society descend into cultural insanity.
The first step is to learn to compare. This is what pop culture hates
the most: to say that one’s musical taste is better, or worse, than another.
But, as we’ve seen, this is just a ridiculous byproduct of relativism (if it
isn’t clear to you yet, relativism is self-referentially incoherent. To say
that there is no objective reality is to say that it is objectively true that
there’s no objective truth). Musical taste is not the same as taste in candy
flavors. There are real standards. To reject these standards is to put aside
one’s rationality and to allow one to be dominated by the ugly and the stupid
(as we have seen in this essay). Unlike candy or any other food, which only
sates the sensual aspect of our humanity, music is able to get hold of our
whole being, either to lift us up to the heaven or to drop us to hell,
depending on its message. By comparing and defending beautiful music from the
ugly pop songs of today, we are able to love our neighbor by still getting hold
of their hands before they fall into musical damnation. The fact that there’s
objectivity in music should never be controversial anyhow, as many students of
music know. For instance, you cannot just invent a new chord or invent a new
way of playing a chord. Chords also have natural progressive and causal
connections between them. We also know whether one is singing out-of-tune (and
isn’t it ridiculously irritating?). By elevating this objectivity correctly can
we compare rightly, and thereby pull the pop addict out of the hypnotic trance
given to him by the false god known as the pop star.
Learn to educate (and be educated)
There’s a reason why throughout the centuries, music is considered a subject
matter for academics. Music is not just something to be listened to, but also
something to be studied. The greatest musicians of all time – Beethoven,
Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, Palestrina, Shubert, Wagner and more – didn’t just
look up a song in the internet, look for its chords, play it, get an idea from
it, and create their masterpieces. “Well, because they didn’t have internet
then”, you say, but that’s exactly the point. Lack of internet pushed them to
work harder, to learn harder, to listen harder (this is precisely what made
Beethoven so great; not only did he lack the internet, he also lacked the
proper access to sound, because he became deaf). Maybe it’s time to drop the
phone and grab an instrument and learn to play it.
Not all, of course, can develop proper musical abilities, just as not
all can become a philosopher. But we all have ears to hear (the only exception
is that if you are deaf; so, don’t act like one if you’re not) and we can train
those ears to develop a sense of comfort in listening to good music. We can
educate it by (and this is where you can use your internet) looking for
classical pieces in YouTube, for example, and focusing on it in a way you can’t
in pop music.
Then, assuming that you are charitable enough, never be ashamed to
share the new taste in music that you have just developed. This can be a way
for us to do “crypto-evangelization” (“secret” or “hidden” evangelization).
This can be a way for us to change the world for the better. Just put this in
the back of your head: music forms culture, and culture expresses music. The
music that is rampant in a community tells what kind of community it is. This
means that it
matters what you listen to.
To build the culture is to have good music as a tool. Improving one’s community
cannot be done if you yourself are the one who clings to good music. People
around you should be united to your cause as well. Through music, a society truly
becomes one body (you need not even think about the society
per se; just look at the concert halls were classical musicians would play;
whatever the piece the orchestra may be playing, it has the ability to wrap
both the performers and the listeners to a common language), and through becoming a single body, the society aims and operates to
reach a single goal. And the only goal worth reaching is heaven, in which we are able to have a
foretaste through beauty, specifically through the beauty of music.
Conclusion
We have seen how art and beauty ought to support each other, lest the
people who absorb art become a culture marinated in the ugly. This is widely
evident in the music we consume. We have also seen how, in a rebellious and
godless generation such as ours, the world thirsts to have a religious figure
in order to fill a void that only God can satisfy, by resorting to the person
of the pop star. This has led to a decline in moral, religious, and aesthetic
values, founded upon the sudden rise of relativism.
It is my hope that, in reading this essay, you, dear reader, are able
to open your eyes to the reality that you are in. I also hope that this will
lead you to the proper appreciation of beauty, an objective reality that the
world unfortunately lacks today. May you join the ranks of fighters and
crusaders against ugliness so that we may be able to change the world for the
better. Always remember that the first step to winning this cultural combat is listening to the right
music. A.M.D.G.
[i] If
Atheism is, as Edward Feser calls it, the Last, or the ultimate, Superstition;
then modern Pop is the Last musical garbage
[ii] I
Just learned that this probably isn’t something St. Augustine really said or
wrote, but it doesn’t matter for now.
[iii]
1 Corinthians 13:13
Comments
Post a Comment