Musing on Music

I have to post something more substantial than the previous post or the night will be wholly lost. Right now I'm listening to some blues station on iTunes radio. I'm doing this because I'm horrendously depressed at the moment and this kind of music somehow helps me verbalize the way I feel. Or maybe Its just nice to have someone agree with me that that the world is indeed nothing but a continuum between pain and boredom. Schopenhauer would liked the blues. Anyway, a brilliant musician I knew as a teenager once made the pithily absurd comment that 'music is mood food.' This stuck with me not so much because it was eloquent (obviously its not) but because it was uttered by one of the smartest, most talented people I have ever known.

I have noticed that to an extent this is true. Oftentimes I try to listen to certain types of music to force myself to feel a certain way. For example, often when I am bored and having a hard time focusing on my work and generally acting like a petulant highschooler I try to listen to very esoteric music, classical music, Bach, Early Music - that kind of thing - in order to somehow gain access to a part of my personality that seems temporarily out of service. I'm not sure exactly how the line of reasoning works, but its something along the lines of 'erudite people listen to stuff like this, maybe if I do too I will be able to be erudite myself, maybe this will help me write my paper.'

Sometimes it works. Usually it just makes me feel like that much more of a failure because as I increasingly fall down the rabbit hole of insecurity when faced with a big assignment I begin to feel that I am not one of those people - I am not erudite, I am not smart or insightful - I can't feel anything when I hear this music - this music, written by geniuses, does nothing for me. I'm not part of the club and I never will be...... Or so goes the voice in my head.


So right now I'm listening to blues. Not the shitty Chicago-style crap with allot of brass and (egad) Major keys. No, right now I am listening to The dirty kind of blues that's all in a minor key. Preferably in the key of E, B or F. There's this notion that some people are blessed with a disorder called synesthesia where the senses get confused and cross with one another. People on lysergic acid have this experience when they 'see music' or 'taste colors' or whatever. Well, I don't have this in any full-blown sense, but I do feel that certain keys have certain colors. To me B is blue, D is green, A is red, E is dark blue or purple and F (which is only a half step from E can either be brown (when its major) or a very very dark purple when its Minor. For this reason 'When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin is always like looking straight into the void for me. Its the deepest, darkest sound I can imagine.


So there's no real conclusion to this. How can one wrap up anything anyway? This music isn't going to help me get anything done. It might help me feel what I already feel, which seems like an odd thing to do, but people try get more access to their emotions through drugs and alcohol and therapy all the time, so I guess its not an entirely crazy thing to attempt. Speaking of which, I should really be drinking to do this properly.