Dilemma: Do I write about subjects that I know interests my audience? Since I do know who reads my blog, I know fairly well what is mostly of interest among them. Or do I write about what's on my mind? What I'm interested at the moment.
Solution: Meh, I'll write what I want to write.
I've been thinking lately about taste in music, and why people like what they like. I like to think that I have a fairly broad taste in music, and because of that, there is a lot of music that I like that other people cannot stand. Often people describe some of my music as "weird".
When I think of a band I would describe as weird, I think of Radiohead. Though it is among my favourite bands, there is a fair bit of music by Radiohead that I cannot enjoy. It's just too far out there. When others I know listen to some songs by Radiohead that I love, they often don't know what to think, or they just flat out can't stand it. It's too weird.
For example, the album Kid A is the type of music that I only ever listen to by myself, since I know almost nobody who would enjoy it with me.
This semester at college, I've been taking a German Culture through Film class. It is incredibly interesting. Lately we've been watching a couple of silent films from the 1920s such as Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), and Nosferatu (an early vampire movie about Dracula, but with a different name due to copyright issues). In the way of audio, these movies involve only a score that plays continually, as the speech is shown by way of intertitles (a frame with just words, since there is no audio from the movie itself). The original scores for such movies are often lost, so new scores are written to accompany the movie, but any soundtrack that matches the mood will do.
So my professor (a Radiohead fan) decided that we would watch Nosferatu with Kid A as the soundtrack. In my opinion, the music fit the mood perfectly. Eerie, unsettling, but at a fairly even energy the whole time.
I looked around the classroom, as I was interested in what others thought of the music. I saw bobbing of heads, eyes glazed over, and the occasional admiring grin as the music matched up perfectly with the scene. This surprised me. Most people would not enjoy this music.
I have concluded that the music worked because of the context. It seemed right, and not out of place, therefore people enjoyed it. If we had listened to the album without the movie, I'm sure there would be more frowns.
I have also come to the conclusion that those who enjoy such music without the context of the movie are those who are willing to conform their mood to the music. I've often heard people say that music can affect one's mood, but in this situation, the listener is intentionally changing his or her mood to match that of the music. This is my theory. Some are not willing to adapt their mood to the music because they do not feel any sort of dedication to the music itself. They would rather stay in the mood they are in than change just in order to enjoy a piece of music. This leads me to believe that those who are lovers of music, rather than the casual listener, are more willing to adapt to the music and therefore have a wider taste in music.
I'm sorry if that came of as elitist in any way, but it's impossible to deny that some people are more dedicated to listening to music than others.
