No News Is Good News   (2015Sep29)

Tuesday, September 29, 2015                                          12:19 PM

I’m exhausted—and no wonder. The pope, the speaker, the UN, refugees, drought in California, water on Mars, a super blood moon, the new Daily Show once again precedes the Colbert show… is it just me or is the world turning twice as fast these days? Have you noticed a lot of news shows start their segments with, “Well, there’s a lot to cover tonight…”? That used to signify a ‘busy’ news day—now it’s just what they always say.

My personal life, away from the TV, isn’t quite as busy. But I did just post a big Brahms performance I’ve been working on for months—and I just found out today is my son’s 27th birthday! (I wish Claire had told me before I said to him, “Good Morning”—like it was any other day…) We had our daughter and her husband here for a visit from California last week. Claire just passed her big OT qualification test—a culmination of years of study for her OT Master’s Degree—and a sign that she will soon be job-hunting. But first she has to do jury duty in NYC—we were relieved she was only called downtown last week for Thursday morning—commuting right through the pope’s visit to ground zero—that would have been a hassle. I’ve got a road-test next week that will re-instate my driver license, if I pass it—Spencer just passed his a few weeks ago. So, okay, maybe I am busy.

As they say, it beats the alternative. I’m sitting here at my keyboard, on watch to tip the delivery man when he gets here with birthday lunch Chinese take-out. Tuesday is new movies day On Demand—Melissa McCarthy in “Spy”—so there’s even a good movie in my ‘cart’. Time to catch my breath, I think.

Patton was right—“Americans love to fight”—but I think he oversimplified it, thinking in bellicose terms. Our Revolutionary War was a declaration of our willingness to fight when we encountered unfairness. “Live Free or Die” seems overly familiar and trite to us today but it was a formula for suicide in the centuries before the Declaration—when the greatest prior advance in social justice had been the allowance that a person owned their own soul at death—“Free Doom”. Somewhat less ambitious, wouldn’t you say?

And after the revolution, when Texas was willing to enter the Union rather than submit to Spanish imperialism, we fought for them. Then the majority of Americans decided to fight against slavery—give or take a week-long Civil War historians conference on the ‘root causes’. It was unfair—and we were willing to fight over it. In both World Wars, we entered on the losing side—fighting unfairness. The internal struggles over racial equality, gender equality, and the rights of the sick, disabled, LGBT—all fights over unfairness. You show me an injustice and I’m ready to start swinging—why? Because I’m American, that’s why. I really would rather die than live in unfairness.

There are always those who don’t get the central premise—as early as Hamilton’s arguments with Jefferson over Federalist versus Republican, there were those who sought out the ‘easy win’—people who felt that leaving the mother country was simply a chance to be an England of our own, with a monarchy and all that implies. They wanted Washington to be “President for Life” and be addressed as ‘your majesty’—but Washington said ‘no’, like an American. Hence he is known as the Father of our Country not just because he fought the war, but also kept the peace as an American would and always will.

Today we have many people who don’t get the central premise—they think America’s greatness resides in its wealth and power—its shock and awe. Nonsense—childish nonsense. The unbelievable success of our country comes not from any material richness or military prowess—it comes from our ambition to fight for the truth. Yankee ingenuity has been finding new shortcuts towards a better future since the founding. Freedom of speech has made our democracy into the strongest of ties between a government and its people of any country on Earth. Open minds and open commerce have exploded into a global community of digital thinking, space exploration, genetic manipulation, super-sonic travel, and on and on.

Our greatest threat is the explosive variety of our success—the ‘easy wins’ float around like fish in a crowded barrel—the opportunities to exploit our success by working either in lieu of the American spirit (through hyper-capitalism) or in direct opposition to it (through extremist bible-thumping and xenophobic exclusion) are more numerous, and get better media coverage, than the real goals of true Americans.

The enemies of America seek to reinstate unfairness through new pathways—income inequality, religious division, jingoism, and denying the existence of intractable racial injustice—and all their arguments are based on fear and hatred, with a big dollop of laziness and greed to top it off. They make me tired—traitors in our own land. Fight the power!

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There—I had to get that off my chest. I always get self-righteous after watching a documentary. I just watched “Standing In the Shadows of Motown—The Funk Brothers”—about all the great studio musicians whose uncredited artistry was behind hundreds of number one hits—hits that I remember from my childhood as the ‘product’ of the lead singers and groups whose names are so familiar to us all today. A handful of men in a Chicago basement would be responsible for over a decade of a multi-million-dollar music industry, without so much as a credit on the dustjacket. That kind of unfairness burns my chaps and it always will. Why? ‘Cause I’m a ‘Murican, that’s why.

False Principles   (2015Apr04)

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Saturday, April 04, 2015                                            11:15 AM

The Copernican ‘Principle’ is the latest catchphrase for bifurcating religious belief and scientific inquiry, interpreting Copernicus’s astronomical observations as a ‘non-geocentric’ view. And a new movie being released, “The Principle”, presents the modern-day argument against Copernicus, based on a book entitled “Copernicus Was Wrong”. It may feel exhausting to learn that there are people here, now, in the twenty-first century claiming that the Earth is the stationary center of the universe, but it is my sad duty to inform you that such is, in fact, the case.

In the usual way, controversy over this film has centered on the very public disavowal by scientists filmed for this documentary of the edited comments they make in the course of their interviews. God forbid the media focus on the actual point of the controversy—the cosmology itself. It is far easier to have a grand ‘he said-she said’-type of verbal rumble than to examine the science and/or theology of the filmmaker’s representations—and more entertaining, as well, since actual thought is not necessary when discussing the ins and outs of a gossip-war.

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These days I’m often tempted to become paranoid. I’m tempted to entertain the possibility that the powers-that-be are subsidizing the public discourse on anything that is so outrageous that sensible folks are taken aback at the mere mention of the premise. Denying evolution fits into this category, to my mind, as does climate-change denial. But geocentricism is just one step up from a belief in a flat Earth—surely no serious grown-up would argue that we should revisit the idea that our little planet is the very center of all creation—not just our own galaxy (in which our entire solar system is demonstrably placed far out on one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms) but of all the galaxies.

The fact that our discovery of other galaxies in the universe is fairly recent, and the product of modern science-based cosmology, doesn’t seem to faze the geocentrists. Neither do the geocentrists consider, as most scientific-minded folks might, the newness of our knowledge about other galaxies to be a warning sign against making premature judgements about their nature—like many apologists, they rather consider such ‘early returns’ an opening for wild theories about how we can return ancient myths to the realm of factual data.

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This never fails to frustrate me. I can accept all kinds of argument about what this means, or what that means—I can accept that there may be many things that we, as humans, misunderstand. But I will never see the connection between that mystery and any sort of confirmation of ancient scriptures that describe ancient man’s encounters with ‘The Creator’. To me, that’s a pretty big hole in an argument—that its only backing comes from people who were basically fresh from inventing the wheel.

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The problem, for me, is that we are not comparing the science of ancient times to the science of today—we are contesting the primacy of ancient myth versus modern science. When we make statements today, they are based on observations and calculations. When we choose the religions of millennia gone by, we are working exclusively by hearsay, without any information. And believers will make a point of this, insisting that ‘faith’ must operate outside of the scientific method. For them to turn it around and use their faith as an alternative to science, to attack science as an enemy of faith, seems like an argument against itself.

One thing that struck me was the filmmaker’s comment, during an interview with Church Militant (!), that cosmologists have been forced to go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to explain the creation of the universe without starting from the assumption of a Creator. Well, yes, Mr. Smarty-Pants, science without the benefit of Magical Thinking does get a little complicated. Everything gets complicated when we don’t allow ourselves the luxury of saying, ‘just because’. Apologies if that makes your poor little brain hurt.

Also, these Christian pseudo-intellectuals always gloss over a very important point—who says that humans are capable of knowing how or why the universe was created? If scientists can’t figure it out before lunch, does that mean that our only fallback position is to return to the crumbling scrolls of ancient civilization? Only if that’s where you meant to end up in the first place. Science is very useful stuff, but no one ever claimed it would replace all the ‘knowledge’ and ‘explanations’ provided by superstition. Science is handicapped by its insistence on being transferable to any culture or society. As Neil deGrasse Tyson likes to say, “The great thing about Science is that it’s true, whether you believe in it or not.” But no one claims that science is a complete answer—only religion offers that brand of snake-oil.

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And in the context of this film, “The Principle” we aren’t even addressing the truth of science—we find ourselves in a discussion over the correctness of certain interpretations of scientific truth. After all, the question is easily decided—Einstein tells us that everything is relative to ‘an observer’. If we wish, we can interpret the rotation of the Earth as the rest of the universe spinning in the opposite direction while the Earth remains still. By the same token, we can consider ourselves stationary when walking—that the ground beneath our feet is moving backward as we float in a set point. Relativity allows us these mental games—and they are true in the technical sense. But they are no more true than the standard interpretations—that the Earth does spin, that we move while we walk.

Recent archeological research has determined that the ‘history’ in the Bible may not be entirely accurate. For instance, the movement of the Jews from Egypt into Canaan is represented in the Bible as a military campaign led by Joshua, who conquered city after city. Recent evidence indicates that the Jewish culture infiltrated the region in a less obvious way, and on an entirely different time-line than that given in the Old Testament. The show’s narrator speculates that the biblical account may have been a form of propaganda, written long after the actual events took place. Thus the Bible, which long ago lost its claim to scientific fact, is losing its last claim to relevance—as the only source of ‘historical’ documentation of biblical times.

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But this very questionable bit of literature remains, amazingly, our fallback position whenever we are stymied by the stubborn nature of scientific truth. Even more hilarious, to me, is the Christians’ easy assumption that if religion is legitimized that Christianity will, of course, be the most legitimate of all the religions—a double-whammy of wishful thinking!

I don’t know about most other atheists, but I am constantly deluded by the fantasy that I can one day say, “Alright, you guys—that’s enough childishness. It’s time we started facing things like grown-ups. The fairy tales are nice, but we’ve got some real issues we need to deal with, and religion ain’t helping.” It is nearly impossible for me to accept that most people would hear such a simple statement as ‘crazy talk’. This is the greatest challenge for atheists, particularly lapsed Catholics like myself—the longer we live without religion, the sillier other people’s faith becomes. Eventually, it becomes very difficult to believe that they really are serious about their fantasies. We forget what it was like to simply accept magic in our lives without question.

They say that Love is the only socially acceptable form of insanity—but in my opinion, Religion takes the cake in that contest—Love doesn’t even come close. When Love creates difficulties in our lives we agonize over it—“Is this really Love?”; “Is this love worth that sacrifice?”, etc. But when difficulties arise over Religious beliefs, we refuse to even discuss the issue—talk about crazy. I’m not even going to get into the whole ‘beheadings’ business—jeez!

The filmmaker complains that his movie should win an award for “movie most reviewed by people who’ve never seen the film”. I’m afraid he’s right about that—but I don’t need to watch a whole film to understand what he’s trying to do by making it. I can just look out my window at dawn and ask myself whether the sun is rising or the Earth is turning towards it—and whether the astronauts looking out the ports of the International Space Station would agree with my answer.

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Saw A Documentary Today

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Thursday, January 31, 2013           11:42 PM

I’ve been watching the History Channel documentary, “The Men Who Built America”. American History allows for many approaches, many different types of foci from which to weave a narrative—this one takes up the stories of the early ‘titans of industry’:  Cornelius Vanderbilt (the Railroad tycoon), J.D. Rockefeller (the Oil tycoon), Andrew Carnegie (the Steel tycoon), and J.P. Morgan (the Banking tycoon). Eventually, the story arrives at the period of Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Trust-Busting’ reforms, and the tycoons that follow all have some aspect of their industry that builds on the edifice founded by these primary Robber Barons—and all have more oversight to answer to (in that those first titans operated without any restrictions other than those theorized by Darwin).

But I found it troubling in its pat-ness. The early efforts to unionize workers and mitigate the horrific burdens and dangers of the mills and factories were met with almost reflex violence. The management so thoughtlessly dumped harsh conditions upon the employees, simply in the pursuit of personal profits—but when these people objected, they were shot at, beaten, and harassed. The owners lowered wages and extended work hours until the steel mill workers were killing themselves on twelve-hour workdays and supporting their families on starvation wages. Then, when the management (a guy named Fisk) saw that the workers meant to unify in a strike, he hires Pinkerton ‘mercenaries’ and sends them to shoot into the strikers’ blockade line.

I just can’t get over the idea that, in those times, it was acceptable to treat the people who actually did all the work as underlings, not as equals, and to impose upon them the worst of both ends—long hours and low pay. As a ‘history lesson’ this documentary seemed to say, ‘Capitalism has always treated the hard-working employees as beasts—and we still do that very same thing in present-day business’. Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital ” was originally a piece of journalism more than a Communist Manifesto. Karl was simply pointing out the bare facts—that the rich and powerful took for granted the right to treat everyone else like dung to be scraped off their boots. And the only reason they got away with it was that workers were willing to accept the roles the bosses cast them in.

There is and has always been a bottom-line, survivalist ‘engine’ at the heart of civilization’s achievements—when I look at the Pyramids at Giza, I imagine generations of slaves being incentivized with club and lash; parts of the Great Wall of China were mortared with human bone and blood; the United States of America was the result of genocide of the natives and the buying and selling of ‘slaves’ kidnapped from another continent—and we don’t really have to talk about Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Late-Nineteenth-Century America, having newly crossed the threshold of the Industrial Age, would make of itself a great nation—with railroads crisscrossing from coast to coast, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, steel production for bridges and skyscrapers, electric lights, and oil—first used for kerosene lamps, until supplanted by Edison’s light-bulbs—when oil became even more important as gasoline for the new ‘horseless’ carriages. The issue of whether this could have been accomplished less savagely is moot—the past is past.

But I think it’s a cop-out to present our historically-energized progress of those times as something we ought to admire these bastards for making happen. Their rivalries, their compulsions, and their presumption of superiority over the workers they persecuted—it wasn’t the only way to accomplish all those things. It was, in fact, about the most self-centered, vicious and destructive way to bring that modern infrastructure into being. Not to mention the pure, unashamed avarice they made no attempt to hide—the greed that was their only true goal. The eventual rise to greatness of 20th-Century America was, to some degree, an accidental by-product of the grasping, envious accumulation of wealth and power that consumed the lives of these ‘historical’ figures.

To top it all off, PBS had commentary-segments that allowed us to hear what today’s entrepreneurs had to say about these old-timey fat-cats—and there was real admiration on the faces of Donald Trump, Jerry Something-or-other (the big Hollywood producer), and a bunch of other shark-ish people who’d made a pile by ‘daring to be a-holes’ (my words, not theirs). Oddly, if you’d asked me what documentary film would benefit from these superficial money-grubbers’ thoughts, I’d have to think for quite a while—but bridging the gap between the Robber Barons of the past and today’s ‘Greed is good’ Masters of the Universe only drove the point home more painfully. Those early tycoons were interested in riches, power, and influence—and such people will always be with us.

With us, yes, but do we have no option other than to allow such people to be in charge of humanity’s destiny? In modern politics there is a tradition of admiring the take-charge types and playing dirty tricks against opponents and generally making that business one whom all sensible people avoid—the result is a political system wholly populated with people who seek power. We know that these people are the worst possible group to have governance over us—but no one with an ounce of integrity can bear to spend time among them, much less take part in their campaign rituals and power brokering.

But in Finance and Industry, the set-up is even more macabre—people inevitably nickname their business leaders as sharks, cut-throats, “take-no prisoners”, head-hunters, corporate raiders, swindlers, muggers, con artists, treacherous, lecherous coyotes and hyenas, embezzlers, and ‘masters of the universe’. That last I find spectacularly perverse, implying as it does both the ability to pilfer society, and the idea that doing so is the most important part of existence. The corporate owners and bosses don’t stop at misinformation, corruption, and sneakiness—no, for an honorable person to become part of this group, a willingness to accept bullying, crime, and violence—and to join in—is required.

Politics and business are old, old institutions—their cold-blooded predations against we common families and our mores were already ancient, long before the Americas were a glint in Columbus’s eye. The difference with America’s Industrial Era was, and is, that it gave the Rich-and-Powerful unstoppable power while also making the Earth a place where no one could go completely native, wandering away from civilization into terra incognita. The powers-that-be became unassailable and inescapable almost simultaneously.

So I think enough time has passed—we can reflect on the centuries gone by—we can see that they were savage and inhumane. And capitalism has had a great run—in conjunction with war, it has leavened civilization, lifting up our abilities and our technology. But these things have long ago outstripped the humanity that is our higher selves, our hoped-for goals as a global society. It is time to find a way to live that rises above commercial competition and the 1% controlling the other 99%–we need to get science-fiction-ey about this. Why not? Science Fiction, or what we imagined was science fiction when I was a young man, has sprinted past our reality and now finds us in a world that only the well-educated and tech-savvy can comprehend.

Yet amongst all this futuristic electronics, space travel, and Hi-Res 3-D we still act as if we are playing capture the flag, never being secure in our lives due to the constant competition. Competition is great, alright? It builds character and all that whoop-dee-do. But a global civilization like ours would be best served by individuals who see cooperation as their highest priority. Cooperation, not competition, is the key to surviving our own instincts, our violence, our greed, and our lust for power over each other. Pluralism and inclusion are the only answer if we ever hope to get past our divisiveness and bigotry. Religious tolerance is the only way to wrest power away from the zealots and reactionaries.

And we can never control our waste and pollution if we don’t stop competing for cash and consumables, real estate and natural resources. Great damage has been done to a fragile globe—but no one involved in its being laid waste can stop—others would simply step in and continue the waste in one’s place.

The United Nations seems to be a busted institution—what we need is a confederacy of nations that has the right and the power to do what we wish the UN could do—act as a leveler and a mediator, enforce justice without borders, and husband what is left of our Earthly legacy—our ecological balance and our evaporating non-renewable resources. We need a ‘super’ UN. And we need to call time on the game of ‘business’—even it if wasn’t a path to our self-destruction, it is too fragile a structure to be the bedrock of our existence. The Markets swing up and down with no discernible logic—and it doesn’t help that many traders and investors are just gamblers at heart; making risky bets that threaten even the most solid corporation.

We support people when they’re old or poor or disabled—we should be looking to government to support everybody and coordinate individuals’ efforts to meet needs, not market pressures. Impossible—yes, yes—I know. But it’s like Sherlock Holmes always says: “Once you have eliminated all other options, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.” If we look at our present and think of our future (if any) it is the only way. Our love of liberty and freedom is all very well—but to confine it within only one or two nations’ borders makes a sham of the whole thing. We live well while other nations starve and suffer—while even some of our fellow citizens do the same.

What is the point of civilization, if it isn’t moving ever closer to a civil society? “The one who dies with the most toys wins”? Is that how it really has to be? Seems stupid—but what do I know? Seven billion people is a pretty big group for a ‘free-for-all’—without any intelligent plan to it, it’s just a bunch of animals overrunning the planet. Or am I missing something?

Musings on the Steven Kessler documentary “Paul Williams – Still Alive”

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I just watched a documentary, “Paul Williams – Still Alive” (directed by Steven Kessler) on Paul Williams, a great songwriter who was catapulted into fame in the seventies, who has been 20 years sober at the time of the documentary’s filming, and who now lives a more thoughtful life but still does some touring and concertizing.

I remember Paul Williams from my younger days—mostly as a celebrity who turned up on just about any talk show or variety special you can name from that era—but I was also aware of some of his songwriting credits—his songs that were made hits by The Carpenters made me respect him as an artist, but his media-presence showed less of his musical genius and more of his desperation for attention and acceptance—and that was a big turn-off for me. (That is probably because he was doing the same sort of showboating that my own insecurity and introversion would bring out, had it been me who was famous.)

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But there was (there always is) a lot of the ‘big picture’ I was unaware of. For instance, he wrote hits for Streisand (“Evergreen”), Kermit the Frog (“The Rainbow Connection”), Three Dog Night (“An Old Fashioned Love Song”), The Monkees (“Someday Man”)—well, just look him up on IMDb—he is a major thread interwoven into the Movie, TV, and Music industries of his ‘heyday’—and he won multiple Oscars, Grammys, Golden Globes, and other awards including the Music Hall Of Fame. Look him up on their site—the list of song credits is four pages long! He is presently the President of ASCAP which, along with his touring and his family, keep him busy and happy.

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But all that stuff is what I learned from Steven Kessler’s quirky documentary—what I want to talk about is what was running through my own mind while I watched it. Anything related to the Carpenters always brings to mind the tragic helplessness of Karen Carpenter trying to please the whole world and dying from it. It also reminds me of those so-relatable, heartbreaking Carpenters hits that spoke to me with, it seemed, my own voice—the voice of a lonely, yearning teenager who would have (had I been in a position to) willingly sacrificed myself in the same way, just for some intimacy or attention.

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Paul Williams’ songs always had a bitter flavoring, sprinkled on top of the simplest melodies—a plurality that I always associate with that time in my life, and in entertainment history. He was too soft to be akin to the Stones or Dylan or the Who—but he was exploring the emotions the rest of us (the uncool, the unpopular) were feeling when we compared ourselves to Mick Jagger—or even to the most popular jock or cheerleader in our own schools.

There was other stuff too—iterations of the same pattern—such as being condescended to by peers who ‘knew’ what ‘real’ music was. The truth, that I was much more familiar with music in general, including Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Nationalist, Ragtime, and with the popular music of that entire first half of the twentieth century, pre-Elvis, pre-Beatles, was practically meaningless, since the ‘serious’ music officiandos and taste-arbiters of my school days discounted all of that as merely the dross that lead to the ‘real’ music of our day.

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But I don’t have to dissect the teenage psyche—it was bad enough without going over it again, don’t you think? The truth is that taking a serious attitude towards anything is a mistake while in the adolescent milieu. And that was me—too serious, too oblivious, too insecure, and a teacher’s pet (the fate of all who do too well in class).

And now, forty-some years later, I finally realize that my musical influences were not The Beatles, The Monkees, Three Dog Night, etc. Those were performers—no, my real influences were the songwriters—Bob Dylan, Carol King, Neil Sedaka, Paul Williams, Randy Newman, Lennon & McCartney, etc. Each music group had its own special timbre, but the music they played was very often written by someone else.

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We once looked at these legendary rock bands as idealists, champions of truth and justice—or, conversely, as turncoats who had ‘sold out’ or ‘knuckled under’ to The Man. We were too young to see them simply as professional musicians and performers—we completely overlooked the fact that all these groups had contracts with major labels, managers and agents that molded their repertoire, and far more personal demons and foibles than personal crusades.

We were fundamentalists of rock n’roll, really—we ignored all the factual details and bestowed upon our rock gods a great power and knowledge that only existed in our dreams. And every advance that ‘Music’ made back then rendered the previous gods and goddesses suddenly immaterial—there were times when Dylan was too ‘old’, the Beatles were too ‘banal’. And many were the stars who shone only briefly, until the cool kids came to a consensus about their authenticity as ‘hard’ rockers, or their lack of same. Some of the artists who failed this test were among my favorites—Beach Boys, Abba, Cat Stevens, the Association, Herman’s Hermits, Peter Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Donovan—the list is endless.

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And I’ve had the cold comfort, over the years, to see many of my favorites enjoy a comeback, or a re-assessment, that in some way validated my early, uncool opinions. Some of the old groups and artists have even surfaced here and there as cult figures—Abba, Barry Manilow, the Monkees, Neil Diamond—and I, for one, am gratified that the quick dismissal of we teenagers of the 1960s-1970s was not the final word on the quality of their music—and that many, many other people still feel as strongly as I do about that early music.

Musical seriousness is something I’ve always avoided. Judgmental attitudes about the aural arts have their place, when speaking of professional musicians. They work hard enough at their field and their lives are made or unmade by their artistic choices—they have every right. But as audience members, people who take their music seriously enough to question someone else’s tastes are just being disagreeable on purpose—or so I see it, anyway. Think of the YouTube videos that show toddlers in car seats, bopping their entire bodies along with heavy metal or rap songs—how they cry when it’s turned down, and how they’re right back to bopping when the volume is restored.

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To me, that is the essence of music appreciation—love whatever you love and don’t waste time disrespecting someone else’s choices. Today’s ear-buds free us from even having to share our musical tastes to hang out together. And music, good or bad, is not improved by arguing over it. In the end, I’ve come to only one problem—I love so much music, and it can only be listened to one track at a time—I’m spoiled for choice, as they say.

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