Gotpoetry tonight / rant

features the Beat-influenced energy of Sympetalous as well as our always quirky open mike.

C’mon down.

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Things I hate: hot weather, earphones/headphones/earbuds, and the entire concept that you should only carry around and listen to music you already know you like.

Seven times out of ten if I’m listening to music it’s on something that is beyond my control — usually a streaming radio connection. I like serendipity. I like being surprised.

I like sometimes having to form an opinion about a song, and not always having a moment of happy recognition.

Pandora hands me things like what I like. I want a service that’ll say “Fuck your love of indie rock and postmodern jazz twanking, dickwad, suck on THIS” — and then hand me ABBA. I hate ABBA, but I can imagine moments when ABBA will be the exact thing I need to hear after a particularly up-my-own-ass moment of musical snobbery.

I hate headphones because music sharing and the resultant discussions are among my favorite memories in my life.

I’m with Robbie Robertson — music should never be harmless, by which he meant it should never leave you unchanged in some way. I am opposed to music as armor or badge or shell…it ought to be a burr under your heart.

None of this is meant to be ironic or sarcastic or parodic. I am beginning to hate those things too, because I am tired of distance, of fashionable numbness and glorified stupid pain at the typical twists and turns of normal life.

Fuck ironic distance, absolute personal control of your media diet, and your own hipness, my hipness, my insular stance and yours. Expect and embrace the unexpected. Allow your self to be discomforted regularly. Discomfort is the source of growth. It’s all there really is.