Music

Decided to get myself a blog...
I've been thinking about music today which is not unsual because I think about music often. You may think that's odd because surely music is something you simply listen to rather than think about but my belief is that it so much more than sound waves heard. It is also felt - it inspires action and alters moods. It reflects feelings in both the person that writes / creates the music and in the listener. Often you hear a song and it inspires you to dance when you're feeling tired, cry when you're feeling happy - it instigates emotions that you didnt even know you had. When I was a little younger, I'm not ashamed to say that I sang along with Alanis Morissette's - You Oughta Know at the top of my voice. I paraded around the bedroom feeling vindicated. Stomping in time the music and probably giving my parents a headache. Now older, in my own home - I still stomp around the house to music. My musical taste has expanded a little since the days of Jagged Little Pill (although I still occasionally indulge in a little Alanis singalong). These days I'm more likely to be heard performing with Bob Dillan, Joan Baez, Sucioperro, Biffy or The Smiths. I find myself singing Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust with a sense of melancholy or contentment depending on my mood and depending on the version (on the Ring them bells tour she changed the words slightly to indicate that the feelings she had for Bob Dillan were long-since past). To all those that may read this, I recommend that you listen the Diamonds and Rust album then the Ring them Bells album. You'll enjoy it, I've no doubt. That said, the like or dislike of a song is subjective - one persons joy is anothers headache. Many people will describe their musical taste as eclectic and still others feel inclined to stick to a genre as if their lives depended on it (ok so I exgagerate slightly). Yet I feel that everyones musical taste is eclectic - no two songs are truly the same (though some of the music in the UK singles charts manages to sound remarkably banal and similar to each other). Chumbawamba once wrote a song that indicated that all music is never completely new, it is always draws from elsewhere - that you can't write a song that hasnt already been written. Perhaps they had a point but to me, only in the following way - when an artist sits down to write a song s/he does not do so without influence from sounds, chords and words from other artists. Even though they may not be consciously aware of it. An artist writes through a colloboration of introspection, reflection and projection. Morrissey once said that "if you must write prose/poems, the words you use should be your own, dont plagiarise or take on loan" - yet (and dare I disagree with the mighty Morrissey whose lyrics I admire wholeheartedly) we can never truly own words, we can only borrow them. Words belong to everyone and no one simultaneously. Oh and just whilst I mention Cemetery Gates (which the line above is taken from) - wonderful really that Morrissey used the word plagiarise - lyrical genius - I certainly think so. That's enough writing for now - perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm off to listen, feel and think some music.