Guide To Life - Music

I think my views on music can be summed up perfectly by the lyrics of a song by John Miles called, simply, “Music” from 1976:

Music was my first love

And it will be my last.

Music of the future

And music of the past.

To live without my music

Would be impossible to do.

In this world of troubles,

My music pulls me through.

For me, music can change my mood completely and I often find myself turning to it to change my mood for the better. I spend a good deal of my time listening to music during the day. When I am in the house on my own and not sitting in front of the television, music will be blaring out of my computer speakers, no matter what else I am doing.

In fact, as I type this, I am actually listening to the song.

Regular readers will know about my passion for music, and the particular genres I like. However, this post is not about my own taste and I won’t be boring you with references to progressive rock and heavy metal.

Instead I would like to talk about what music means to me.

I once wrote a post about which sense I could lose for a year if I were forced to do so. Here’s what I wrote about hearing:

“Like sight, hearing is a major sense that I simply do not think I could do without. I love listening to noises and conversation and, most importantly, my vast collection of music.

Losing my hearing for an entire year would be like not listening to a single song during that period or exchanging words with friends, strangers and, of course, Mrs PM.

That would be unacceptable.”

The key thing here is music because I think I would probably go insane.

I can deal with most situations and moods but when I struggle I turn to music to help me through. Over the years music has somehow pulled me through many difficult situation and helped to change my state of mind from a negative mood to a more positive and realistic one.
I don’t really know why this is.

If I am angry, I can take that anger on with a dose of heavy metal to combat the rage head on. It may sound weird but angry music actually calms me down.

If I am sad, I can listen to uplifting more sedate songs, which help raise my mood and make my mind think of the beauty and wonder in the world, changing my focus on sadness to one of joy.

If I am bored, for example on a lonely drive to another town, I can lose myself in any kind of music and kick start my imagination to allow myself to ponder life and totally relieve the boredom of battling traffic on a busy motorway.

Similarly the boredom of travelling on a long haul flight can be relieved by listening to my vast collection of music.

I have also said on this mad blog that music for me is like a time machine and some of the older songs in my collection can take me back to happy times when I was a lot younger– kind of like a beacon to the past.

While I may criticize the musical tastes of other people, I only do so to steer them away from those who would exploit the artists. As I have become older, I have tried to stop doing this because I have learned that music is totally personal and to attack their music is almost an attack on them. These days I try to say “that’s not my cup of tea” rather than “you have no musical taste whatsoever”.

Mrs PM is a prime example of this.

Our tastes in music are poles apart and I struggle to listen to her music – and of course the opposite is true. I am educating myself to be less critical and, instead, just trying to find common ground so that we can both listen to music that we both like.

It is difficult though because music truly is personal. A song that may take Mrs PM back to a great time in her life might do the opposite to me.

I also know that no two people have exactly the same tastes in music. I have a very close friend with whom I go to concerts but while we like the same bands generally, there are some bands and styles that we simply cannot agree on. For example, I love twenty minute progressive rock masterpieces and he can’t stand them. He likes modern pop punk songs, which generally bore me.

Nobody is the same when it comes to musical taste but, I think, most people have the same passion for music.

As far as music is concerned we should all appreciate music and not criticize each other’s tastes. I have been very guilty of this in recent years and I am trying to change my attitude and open myself up to understand why somebody would rather listen to rap than rock.

It’s hard but I am slowly beginning to understand.

I will conclude by once again pointing out that there is a whole world of music out there on the internet and you shouldn’t be spoon fed your music by radio stations with a hidden agenda.

I won’t rant about it – it’s just an observation.

Music is precious and shouldn’t be exploited.

To finish off, here is the song I was listening to while writing this post. It’s a nice song.

Senses Working Overtime

I wonder about stuff; weird stuff.

Today’s weirdness has been spawned by nothing more than eating a spicy Chinese dish in Kunming last week. Kunming is in the Yunnan province of South Western China and some of the food there can leave a lasting impression on your tongue, even on those that relish a decent curry.

One night, we were in a restaurant, poised in front of a plethora of dishes when, without thinking, I thrust my chopsticks into a dish full of meat and vegetables, managed to capture enough food to give the impression that I could in fact use chopsticks, and then piled the food into my mouth, proud that I had managed to do so without dropping it all over the table or onto my shirt.

I started chewing and then, after a few seconds, realised that I had molten lava in my mouth.


My immediate thought was this:

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!

My second thought was this: I wonder what it would be like to lose my sense of taste.

I then started thinking about all of my five senses and how much they mean to me.

As my weird imagination started to mull this over, I pictured myself in the dock in a courtroom, having just been found guilty of a heinous crime – like being caught watching “The Jeremy Kyle Show” with a huge grin of enjoyment painted on your face. Now this was a weird court handing out weird punishments; my punishment for my crime was extremely weird:

You shall be taken from this place and have one of your senses removed for a period of twelve months. 

Which sense shall it be?

And that, dear reader, is a difficult choice. Which of you five senses would you least mind losing for a period of a year?

Let’s take them one at a time:

TASTE

Without my sense of taste, I would have easily survived the mouthful of molten steel that I threw into my mouth without a care in the world. I would have been able to chew it over and over again without feeling my taste buds being incinerated by the chilli peppers in the dish.

Surely that is a plus point in favour of the other four senses.

The problem is that while I would undoubtedly find myself able to eat odious foodstuffs like liver or rhubarb, I would find myself pining for the food that I enjoyed – like steak, cheese, beer, bacon, chicken etc.

I’ve had a taste of tastelessness (if you will pardon the pun) when I have had a particularly nasty cold that has resulted in my whole head feeling like it was being stuffed with vast quantities of cotton wool. I found it rather unpleasant to be honest. Eating a bacon sandwich in that state is about as enjoyable as eating a couple of pieces of cardboard between two pieces of tofu; bland and awkward.

Could I stand that for a whole year?

TOUCH

If you have ever trodden barefoot in a steaming pile of cat shit or cat vomit then you might immediately think that without you sense of touch, you would not suffer the unpleasantness of slimy cat excreta between your toes.

But there is a downside, dear reader. If you were to tread in an enormous pile of poo while staggering to the loo in the middle of the night, you would be unaware of it, walk it through your house and get back into bed smearing the foul substance all over the sheets.

That’s not nice.

Also, without your sense of touch, you would also not feel pain. That may not be a bad thing but the whole point of pain is to warn you that something nasty is happening to your body. As undesirable as pain may be, it is there for a reason.

Again I have had exposure to losing my sense of touch. I had two fillings and the tooth butcher (aka the dentist) stabbed the left side of my face with a needle full of anaesthetic before applying a drill to my tooth and then filling it with molten metal. I couldn’t feel my face for hours and as I drove home, I dribbled like an imbecile. I reached up and touched my face and it felt really odd – so odd in fact that I almost crashed the car. I was planning to go back to work, but I couldn’t actually speak properly.

And to be honest I couldn’t stand the thought of being ridiculed by my mates, who would undoubtedly have leapt on the opportunity to point out the similarity between me and a drooling Homer Simpson.

I doubt that I could live without my sense of touch after that incident.

SMELL

There are some truly obnoxious smells in the world, like cat shit for example (I apologise dear reader for yet another reference to cat shit but if you had plunged your hand or your foot into a great steaming pile of it, you would know what I mean – I’m not obsessed – honestly). The truth is I would not miss certain odours – particularly nasty farts, the smell of fresh vomit, Chinese toilets or other putrid stenches.

Of course, there are many lovely smells out there like freshly mown grass, a field full of flowers, sizzling bacon to name but a few.

Nevertheless, your sense of smell is there to protect you so that you can avoid noxious gases for example.

Furthermore, when you have a nasty cold with a head full of cotton wool, your sense of smell is cast asunder as well your sense of taste. And to be honest, I haven’t missed it in the past.

Smell might just be a contender.

SIGHT

Without my glasses I am as blind as a bat. I walk around and see woolly blurred shapes and can barely distinguish a bus from a building.

With my specs, however, I have perfect vision and to be perfectly honest I love that. The world is a beautiful place, full of beautiful people and beautiful things and I simply could not bear to part with that – even for a day.

How would I cope not being able to see Mrs PM?

HEARING

Like sight, hearing is a major sense that I simply do not think I could do without. I love listening to noises and conversation and, most importantly, my vast collection of music.

Losing my hearing for an entire year would be like not listening to a single song during that period or exchanging words with friends, strangers and, of course, Mrs PM.

That would be unacceptable.

CONCLUSION

I have come to a decision – finally. If I found myself standing in a dock having been sentenced to lose a sense of my choosing for being caught surreptitiously enjoying watching nutters being verbally assaulted by Jeremy Kyle, I would say:

Your honour, I shall relinquish my sense of smell for a period of twelve months – just as long as you don’t make me wander through a mine filled with chlorine.

Over to you, dear reader. Which sense do you value above all others?

And more importantly, because I am weird, what would you regard as a crime worthy of sensory deprivation for a whole year in my weird courtroom?

I would suggest that a large percentage of Americans might find themselves in that court in the near future – for being caught enjoying watching Piers Morgan on CNN – and actually enjoying it.

That is an almost unforgiveable crime.