What’s music for?
Trying to answer this age old question is still a head-banger.
Somehow it seems that in our enlightenment influenced western democracy we should value things based on their principles and not on their aesthetic qualities. May the best candidate be president and may the best band be famous. As history has shown, these outcomes are often not the case. But it’s a free country and in my life I have tried to make it the case. I’ve long opined that the music should take precedence over outfits and stage antics. It’s one of the more mature value sets that I adopted out of college and it drove me away from many of my favorite bands at the time.
Korn, Slipknot, Mudvayne, they all disrespected themselves by dressing like goof-balls and jumping around the stage like animals. Any serious self respecting musician would rather be playing in a small club completely still and engrossed in their music instead of in some stadium head-banging with a guitar wrapped around their ankles. Plus, there is no way that a stadium full of people could really get the music. If the music is worthy of listening to, most people wouldn’t— no, shouldn’t— get it.
Boy, talk about a buzz kill. Someone needs to lighten up.
In one of those existential crisis kinds of conversations, a musician friend of mine asked the following rhetorical question of himself: “What do I want to use music for?” I still find this question striking because it implies that music, rather than being the end goal, is something to be used in service of other goals. If music isn’t for music’s sake, hell, what is music for?
Music can take you to a place that’s less boring than regular life. But more importantly, you can use music to aim up. It can be like a spiritual practice but instead it’s a musical practice. I know I’m not good enough but I continually strive to improve myself, inspired by my musical heroes. This gives my days a sense of purpose. Without music my life would feel a lot less meaningful.
I’ve often wondered if I could love music as much as I do without playing it. After all, most music fans don’t have a musical practice. So what makes everyone else click with the music they like?
The answer has to be story.
Humans are creatures of narrative. Everything in our lives is centered around story from what we eat to what we car we drive. Most music is story too, especially if it has words. And the characters! From Eminem to Taylor Swift, the artist is the narrator made manifest, gods here on earth, acting out their stories through sound, facial expression, and body language. Somehow, sitting hunched over while staring pensively at the notes you’re playing on the guitar doesn’t make you seem god-like. At least not when I do it.
I’ll maintain my non-plussed performance face for now since I have no idea what to do instead. Smiling is for models, head-banging is for heavy metal, and stuffing my face with ramen isn’t practical while playing the guitar. How did we arrive at mukbang being a possible answer to the question of “What do I want to use music for?” It’s Unprocedurally Generated, folks. Sometimes the ideas dress up like goof-balls and jump around the page like animals.