Musically Challenged

I love music. I really do, I am a big fan of music. I am also very diverse in my musical tastes. Well, no, that's not really true. I am diverse in my experience of music. In many cases (or genres) I'd even say I am a bit knowledgeable. I'll give everything a chance but my tastes are so far pretty well established. Yet I do leave a door open for more to squeak through on the wings of tolerance and curiosity. But I have to confess that right now I am a little peeved with music. Yes, peeved. Perhaps even outraged!

My most recent post had to do with feelings and the human expression of them (An Expression of Love). At one point I spoke of the poets and their particular genius in crafting the most beautiful expression of feeling. This made me think of the Coleridge illustration and I began to browse through The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. In this small but powerful book he uses this illustration. In the book Lewis tells us that we have become "men without chests." This is an all too true tragedy. Yet there is another tragedy. We have also become "men without brains."

We can no longer feel (chests) or think (brains) on our own. Music dominates much of our life. To be totally honest I feel robbed. This is, I realize, a rant due to my own outrage and that in but a matter of minutes I'll be placidly back in my routine of musical intoxication. But right now the veil is off. The gauntlet has been thrown. The drugs have worn off. Now I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Ha! That's the problem. I see the light at the end of the tunnel but I cannot express it without the words of a song. My outrage should not be, I'm well aware, aimed solely at music. Poetry and the other literary bastions are also responsible. At the same time I do not lay as much blame at their feet because this is, after all, the age of the cyborg. We are people wired to music. Literature though powerful still has taken a back seat in our current age.

As with the previous post, it is difficult to express our feelings. Yet I think that it is due to the fact that we are no longer in touch with them. We have dulled them by handing them over on a silver platter as it were to the gods and daemons of music. Ah, you see that's the rub, music is both a god and a daemon. It is a good and a bad thing. The fine line of discernment is hard to draw. It was Chesterton who said, "Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere." Music is an art form in which drawing that proverbial line is incredibly difficult, at times nearly impossible. Yet there is a fine line and it must be walked. The problem is that music is intoxicating and while "under" it's influence one can barely see the line, let alone walk it straight.

Lewis also spoke of the danger of living in amousia. He referred to this in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Music was herself once a muse. Yet she has, I'm afraid, drowned us. Pope spoke on the danger of drinking from the Pierian streams. Well, I'm afraid we've now fallen into them and drowned. We are no longer capable of addressing our own feelings. We cannot, as Coleridge, see the waterfall and exclaim "Sublime!" No, now we seek our thrills not from Nature but from music and other media agents. It's pathetic.