Trivial?

I wonder if other musicians or artists get the feeling that if they make music or their art into their life, they'll be living too pointless a life. (Don't kill me, please! Just read and then verbally abuse me.) Perhaps it's just my skewed outlook on my future, but it seems that songwriting puts forth very little in terms of novel philosophies. That's always been literature's role. Sure, countless songs go quite deep, but usually joining a minority that's otherwise been established. (*Glances at "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag". Well, okay, maybe it's not that deep, but it illustrates the joining an established minority.) And then there's the "Ziggy Stardust" type of introspective lyric writing, which does double as a decent commentary on pop music's whims. Still not the type of stuff that makes your brain feel like a contortionist. Huh. Pop music's whims could give the invisible hand a run for its mo— No, Pop Music's Whims would stab the invisible hand for its money. Anyway. Pop songwriting tends to either be about the same old, or joins a protest, which I'm all for (depending on the protest/movement), don't get me wrong, but never seems to create anything philosophic or political on its own.

I remember a bit in a book - This is Your Brain on Music - about how songs are by and large dealing with some aspect of love because the parts of the brain that deal with music are NOT the parts at all that deal with deeper thought. A pity I lent that book to the other author here, because I can't remember that part very well, so I can't talk more about that...

What I can say is that all good music, programmatic or not, pulls on and plays with emotions. That's not to say there aren't emotionless, objective aspects of studying music. Analysis, some bits of interpreting a piece to be played, etc. But the end result is something that pulls at emotions. And that's why adding lyrics that are deeper than usual is so difficult. At best, you get a very Romantic (notice the capitalised 'R'), subjective song. Hmm. That's funny. So here I am whining about how, in my worst moments, I find music to be trivial, because I want to do more with it, because I like how music feels. I suppose music works very well on me. So much so that I think it should be capable of more. It should turn out crazy, new ideas like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Das Kapital.

Heh. Set "Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet." to melody.
...Oh wait. You can set ANYTHING to the tune of "Aqualung". Seriously. Try it. Rafael and I did this endlessly during the summer. XD



So sue me. I changed the second 'Gott' for 'und'.

All this said, music is not trivial. Not at ALL. I'm not sure what purpose art has in humanity, but we'd be screwed up without it. Using music to further a good purpose, to back a charity, is FAR from 'trivial'. I'm just bothered by literature's place at the forefront of philosophy, and it seems that brains are hardwired to continue bothering me. I guess I'm just unreasonable, and so I write weird, rambling, stream-of-consciousness blog entries at odd hours of the night. *Sits on a stool making an unreasonable grump face.*