Hi, Raptor,
No, I was talking about music. The music industry is an industry, and what you say applies to the music industry. I was talking about music.
In other words, keeping in line with your thoughts about individualism, my opinion is that those people who enjoy music as individuals are likely to find their preferences changing over a course of years.
Like lots of things. I sat in a café with a long-time friend a few years ago, and we watched a really fantastic car go prowling down the street. "You know," my friend said, "not so many years ago, I'd have given anything to OWN that car, or one with that much charisma. But now I find myself actually preferring to not own it, and just to just watch it drive by."
I think we call it "getting older". It is just as much fun. But it is different. At first we say, "Well, I don't listen to that as much as I used to." That's all.
When you're 30, parties are a lot of fun. Maybe you'll meet someone. And certainly you'll be in some lively conversation, and you might be repeating parts of it to your friends next week.
But at 50 or 60, these things have largely been said and heard, and it really doesn't matter what Julie said or what John thought. It's all right, but it means less because you've been there and done that—a hundred times or a thousand times. So you move on.
Different music speaks to us. I guess it must have been 30 years ago that I gave up TV, because I didn't like endlessly hearing the hegemony any more. I didn't even know the word "hegemony" then! But I was responding to a new taste—which was a distaste—for what I was hearing. As you said, the industry was certainly right there. I was learning all about the oligarchy I lived in, without knowing that word either.
I loved music. Mine went from TV to radio to computer, with advertising disappearing along the way. My computer systems show very, very few advertisements. I don't have flash or any messenger/chat services. The computer is just a world library for me, with very little motion. (My systems are the diametrical opposite of, for example, MSN. And my news source is Aljazeera.)
But you are right in suggesting that the music of our culture might be infused with hegemonic marketing values—it definitely is. I used to enjoy watching Friends when I saw TV—but with time I just saw, more and more, the insidious values: "Here are your beliefs for today." "This is good and this is bad." "Think like the cool guy." "Look like the pretty girl." So television melted away, eventually becoming pretty loathsome.
Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Paul Simon—they all lived within the giant industrial machinery. And yet, they were/are artists too. "Nothing you can say is not ultimately subversive—even 'good morning' carries the intention of influencing the way others think."
What surprises me, really, is that I have not gravitated more toward so-called classical music. I enjoy it as much (and as little) as I ever did. I suppose I still enjoy the same musical genres, but that's hard to say because I have always loved so much music, of so many genres.
Trends; no. I distrusted trends when I was probably about 10. I think I was born iconoclastic. I love individuals, even when I disagree with them. In music, you are with multitudes of other people, and you are also alone. It depends on the music, and it depends on you. I have often wondered about the man playing Stairway to Heaven on the sidewalk in the city core. It is exquisitely beautiful. He's played it there for years. I've talked with him sometimes, but he is as tough and remote as the sidewalk. He doesn't seem to play the guitar. He just sits there, a rough-looking character; tough as nails. The music just drips from his guitar-strings, like rain falls from the sky.
The music industry tried to own the music. But nobody owns music. Music is like a girl. You can play music, and you can sing music, and you can listen to music, and you can love music.
But you can never own music. Music owns you.
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