Music: "I listen to everything."

No you don't. Shutup.
That is my most instinctual response to someone that makes that statement. I can't make it any more straight forward. Now, do I respond with that when someone utters those revolting, dreaded combination of words? Of course not, I'm polite, I smile, and I move on (most of the time).
The thing is, that statement only purges my angst barrier because of it's simplicity and broad generalization of such a detailed, intricate, beautiful thing. Music. When 99% of people say that(I hate statistics too by the way), they mean they have one genre they cling to and then one or two others that they can tolerate in small doses. Digging deeper, there is most likely scores of stylings they hate within their favorite genre. The template of "I listen to everything" would probably more closely resemble this:
1. Main genre of interest:
-(I.E.) Country including maybe 50 artists they are aware of
2. Secondary genre: (normally from youth with limited exposure & knowledge
-(I.E.) Rap (20 artists)
3. Tertiary genre: This one normally has very few artists and may run genres together but normally equals out to "that one pop song they are ashamed of liking" or whatever they have heard on mainstream radio

Ok that was boring.....But tell me, am I wrong? I saw you smiling. So the problem with music has become the problem with everything in life. It has been dumbed down and shrink wrapped. Let me tell you why that template works so well. Why I can, with about 80% accuracy, tell what someone listens to before ever speaking with them. It's because most people give into what has been marketed to them since they have been able to pay attention. (remember the sponge analogy?)It's human nature. It's 100% normal. I hate this. Hate it with so much energy that it leaves me feeling exhausted at times.
So what can I do to help change the world and rid the population of this bland, watered down musical taste? What action can I take to eliminate the music universe of these artistic equivalents of frozen TV dinners? Not a damn thing. I'm no prophet, hell I'm not even better of a musician than most of the people I hang out with. The only thing I can hope to do is open the minds of people who haven't yet been sullied with that stench and had that malt-o-meal music force fed to them.
Here's the thing, music is one of the few occurrences in the universe that can be created, yet can't be seen. It can be recorded and replicated but no song will ever be performed or received the exact same twice. It is a product of the performers reaction to the world around them. Because of this, a single piece of music is a commodity. The simple memory of a song can warp someone back in time or change their entire demeanor effortlessly, BLAH BLAH BLAH. Anyways, someone recognized this and thought "hey let me use that to make money!" and from there started the decline of true feeling, love, and anger(and most thought too) as big business, and greed began to rise. This is so obvious to me (and many others) when listening to music, but sadly, it's not to everyone so I am going to break it down as simple as possible.
Stop worrying about genres, and for god sakes stop saying "I listen to everything" and step back and think about what that actually means. Try to broaden your horizons today listen to something from a different time, or a different culture and try to understand and feel what that person experiencing when it was composed and performed. Bottom line, if music has honesty and real feeling put into it, regardless of genre, year, or quality of recording, you will know. If it was thrown together by someone to get 99 cents out of you for a download, you will know.
Here are some examples:
Real


Real expensive


Honest


Liar


Pain and suffering


Suffering threw the song to get the check.


Intensity and passion


Redbull and choreography


Killing themselves for purpose


Making you want to kill them


Hip-hop


Flip-flop


Heavy metal


Aluminum


Country western


American Idyall

Hope this helps.

A different kind of fool

I have made fun of bloggers for years. Why did I choose to start doing it myself, and more importantly, why now? The answer to the question of my hypocrisy is simple, but in three parts: The news of my coming child, The better realization of my mortality, and my obsession with ever changing self paradigms. Ok maybe it isn't as simple as I thought. At any rate, the end goal is to create a viewable, chronologically decipherable log of my ever changing thoughts, beliefs and ideas in hope that, one day, it will serve as a travel guide to life for my so loved unborn offspring (be it if I am alive or not), or at the very least, make for some humorous bathroom reading.

"There are some jokes you can not understand until you have been a fool many many years and thought yourself finally cured, and then found out that you had just become a different kind of fool." -Robert Anton Wilson

 I have, in my previous 27 years, thought many times I knew how the world worked. Each time I was wrong and each time I found out at what seemed like the most inopportune moment. I feel like this is probably the norm for most humans with enough brain capacity to realize when they have made a mistake(even if they don't admit it to the outside world). I feel like every one, at some point in their life(if they are lucky and mentally fortified), will figure this out. I can't pin point the time of my own epiphany, I'm not even sure if it is a precise event or if it's more like finding pieces to a puzzle that you can never put together but once you've seen them all individually you have a pretty good idea of what the picture puzzle is of. The reflection on this idea has become somewhat of a hobby or pastime of mine. To me the mind is a beautiful machine always moving forward in relation to itself but ever changing direction from the perspective of the onlooker. Sure some folks line may seem straighter than others, but show me a person that has been moving in the same direction from birth in relation to ideas, beliefs, wants, moral standings etc. and I will show you a fool, a shallow puppet with no choice or freedom of it's own.
  We are born a sponge, a clean unmarked sponge. From the day we begin to experience our own reality, we are wiped across it and what we absorb becomes us. We will never be able to completely rid ourselves of what we have taken in.
  Ok justin, fine. I agree. What's your point?
  If you can learn to embrace this, it can resolve much anger and frustration inside you. Making you a more positive, accepting person. It won't stop you from picking up all the dirt you don't want along the way but it may help you be ok with it and realize that without that dirt you may not have picked up that bit of gold that was in with it. It won't take away a wrong turn on the way to a concert on a friday night that has already started, but it may help you be ok with it, in turn making your night enjoyable. Late or not. So from one recovering pessimist to another, I leave you with this thought:
"Positive attitude influences positive results."

And a not completely random, slightly funny clip from an amazing and very strange movie: