Topics to be probed after finals:
Why are there so few options for punctuation marks at the end of sentences? Would language be more efficient or expressive if we had access to more than a "." , "?" or "!" ? That is, with punctuation marks that can add a variety of different additional overtones to the sentence, we wouldn't need to express certain meanings using additional words, but could just use the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence to denote implied meaning or emphasis. Or, conversely, for example, we could really experiment with more sophisticated types of irony with a bigger palette of punctuation marks to choose from.
Why are the majority of songs we hear about love? I've wondered about this for years. I suppose a lot of people are inspired by love, but people are also inspired by an inconceivable number of other things as well. (Like this little known gem, which I suppose can still be considered a type of love) Is the fact that love (or lost love, or hatred because of something that happened because of love, or love for God, or hoped-for love... you get the idea) is simply the greatest common denominator, and thus strikes resonances with more people? I find this doubtful. Remember, back in the day, when bard songs about warriors and mythical beasts were all the rage?
About Me
- When In Transit
- I remind myself daily that life is more than a basket of burritos. Here, I'll chronicle my thoughts and rather under-developed postulations while I'm in South Africa.
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Is it just me, or does this post have nothing obvious to do with Chipotle?
ReplyDeleteListen to the song. ;)
ReplyDeleteThis is a huge ramble.
ReplyDeleteWestern ideals of romance didn’t evolve until the Middle Ages, so yes, for many intents and purposes, the centrality of romantic themes to vocal music is a recent development.
But you can't assume song content to be a direct representation of a culture’s psychological state because of all the other cultural conventions and expectations tied up in songmaking. Early-early music (let’s say pre-medieval) was inextricably linked with public performance and storytelling. "Bard songs about warriors and mythical beasts" were essentially THE substance of formal songmaking for some time, is my general feeling. If you were a bard or a skald or whatever else, that’s what you wrote about. So while said “bard songs” are certainly indicative of the centrality of violence and military power to contemporary culture, their prevalence is not necessarily indicative of a concurrent LACK of interest in love. Rather it shows what was considered appropriate material for songs worthy of being extensively repeated, copied, and, importantly, preserved. (Consider the fact that it’s quite possible that songs about love DID exist, but because we have essentially no records of folk music for a huge chunk of time, we might simply be ignorant of their existence.)
Also, plenty of epics involving warriors and mythical beasts also involve copious amounts of lovemaking, rape, marriage, wooing, and so on. Epic heroes are typically as good in bed, one may presume, as they are on the battlefield. Also, we of course know a huge amount of B.C. music and poetry (poetry wasn’t distinguished from music for a really long time because, like story, it was a performative art form) centered on love.
Moving forward a little in time to a point at which I can stop talking extremely vaguely, and a point at which we start having greater records of folk music, I would say that extant folk/popular (non-devotional) music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance is vastly dominated by love songs, with the rest being things like “Queen Elizabeth is great!” (so, I guess you could say, “we love Queen Elizabeth, or at least we say that we do in songs”), and tavern songs that mostly have sexual references in them anyway.
Uh, I guess my ultimate thing is that themes of popular music through time are definitely a useful cultural index, but I would argue that love and/or sex and/or desire have been a universal theme of poetry and music throughout history. Basically, I think that songs, as with all art forms, have been and for all intents and purposes will always be about love, sex, violence, and faith, in various combinations and interpretations, since of course our perceptions and definitions of the above change over time.
hopefully this is actually interesting/useful and I’m not just being unnecessarily pedantic. :( and writing pseudo-essays for no reason. damn. I guess this subject just hit some kind of weird humanistic button in me.
diana has, of course, completely said everything I would have said. So...SOLID.
ReplyDeletehmmm...
additionally,love is less controversial than other strong emotions, hence more likely to be acceptable to mainstream.
So slightly on topic, but not really. Yunx2 and I were having a conversation on the idea of Love, and generally what it could come to me. She postulated that love can never be measured, nor can it be expressed, unless by the expression through "parental love". the way she reasons it is because our parents are supposed to love us unconditionally right? So that's the only type of love that is possible because can anyone else care for you and love you as much as your parents "unconditional" love can hold? unconditional love = love, right?
ReplyDeleteLike we say we "love" someone, but isn't that simply like us spitting out words in a way to express some apparent feeling that may or not be what "love" is? like when you part ways with someone, or girls do this a lot, where they go: "Love ya". Like do you really love the person? If not, you're simply making the word "love" into a completely useless word. It has no meaning nor any "meat" in its 4 letters--symbolizing nothing.
So is love simply something we try to convince ourselves of? Or is there really something that can be argued to be, honestly, and truthfully, love.
Sorry was this too much of a retarded rant? LoL .