i have no idea why, but i've been grinning for the past 2 days. except for last night, when i had panic attacks until 2.30 in the morning (which particularly sucked considering i had to get up at 6). i think it is because i saw my niece last weekend, and my lil bro graduate (barely). and because there is some weight that has been lifted off me. i'm not exactly sure what the weight was, and i'm not exactly sure why it isn't there anymore. it just isn't. weird.
as of late, the only music i really get excited about is country music. and not even all old classic country, either. it has been: alan jackson (because he grew up 20 miles from where i did), randy travis (because he writes good songs, and is primatively christian), dwight yokam (because the new DY has this badass guitar sound to it that i'd never thought of before--like if neil young toured with johnny cash in 1963), conway twitty (because he was my granddaddy's favorite), and willie nelson (because he's willie nelson). i think it has something to do with the fact that when you listen to it down here, it helps the culture to envelop you.
when i took aesthetics in college i thought alot about what art was. looking at primative art, especially, it seems as if it is a way of focusing ones attention on a particular aspect of culture from a particular direction... like sequestering it and trapping it in a space for a while.
my views on personal identity prolly also have something to do with it. for a while i've believed that individuals don't exist that often. the shared practices that add up to make culture are pretty much all we are, really. it is only in rare instances that we ever do anything original or individual. if someone ever did do something entirely original, it wouldnt mean anything, right? because how would anyone know what to do with it? what would it relate to? the person would have to spell it all out for the other person. there is a ground of shared practices and meanings with which to work, and that is that. apart from that we only have what God sends us, and most phi of rel don't even think It exists apart from the whole. its aristotle's ontological principle. but i take the principle somewhat differently, in that i am not near such a materialist as he is... and so all originality really amounts to is rearranging things. but originality of that sort can get really abstract and obscure really quick (see pollack), so art at its best, methinks, is just a regioning of shared meanings. the meanings that make us up. so art is really reflective.
which is what attracts me to country music so much. it doesnt attempt to do anything radically new. at its best, it partitions what is immediate in the culture of working class people and put it with 3 chords. and the motion of the music goes well with the motion of my days cruising the countryside. it is primordial, in a sense, because there is very little complex thought to it.
much in the same way that good art has no complex thought to it. it is a regioning of meaning. aconceptual communication. the more i work at my repititive job, the more i understand this language. it is the more real. more real than grad school, anyways.
also, i wish i was already old with a dog, grandkids and a wife to sit on the porch with.
as of late, the only music i really get excited about is country music. and not even all old classic country, either. it has been: alan jackson (because he grew up 20 miles from where i did), randy travis (because he writes good songs, and is primatively christian), dwight yokam (because the new DY has this badass guitar sound to it that i'd never thought of before--like if neil young toured with johnny cash in 1963), conway twitty (because he was my granddaddy's favorite), and willie nelson (because he's willie nelson). i think it has something to do with the fact that when you listen to it down here, it helps the culture to envelop you.
when i took aesthetics in college i thought alot about what art was. looking at primative art, especially, it seems as if it is a way of focusing ones attention on a particular aspect of culture from a particular direction... like sequestering it and trapping it in a space for a while.
my views on personal identity prolly also have something to do with it. for a while i've believed that individuals don't exist that often. the shared practices that add up to make culture are pretty much all we are, really. it is only in rare instances that we ever do anything original or individual. if someone ever did do something entirely original, it wouldnt mean anything, right? because how would anyone know what to do with it? what would it relate to? the person would have to spell it all out for the other person. there is a ground of shared practices and meanings with which to work, and that is that. apart from that we only have what God sends us, and most phi of rel don't even think It exists apart from the whole. its aristotle's ontological principle. but i take the principle somewhat differently, in that i am not near such a materialist as he is... and so all originality really amounts to is rearranging things. but originality of that sort can get really abstract and obscure really quick (see pollack), so art at its best, methinks, is just a regioning of shared meanings. the meanings that make us up. so art is really reflective.
which is what attracts me to country music so much. it doesnt attempt to do anything radically new. at its best, it partitions what is immediate in the culture of working class people and put it with 3 chords. and the motion of the music goes well with the motion of my days cruising the countryside. it is primordial, in a sense, because there is very little complex thought to it.
much in the same way that good art has no complex thought to it. it is a regioning of meaning. aconceptual communication. the more i work at my repititive job, the more i understand this language. it is the more real. more real than grad school, anyways.
also, i wish i was already old with a dog, grandkids and a wife to sit on the porch with.
Alan Jackson doesn't qualify as primordial for me, but maybe Willie does, and certainly Patsy, Loretta, and Dolly do. I can't relate to the primitive Christianity you say Randy Travis espouses; some folks used to listen to him at the monastery and it just never got to me.
Samba is the most primordial music I have ever heard, with that beat that synchronizes everyone and everything, but then again I can relate to it because it's from my mama's culture. The fact that the percussion style is (pre-Colonial) African in origin doesn't hurt, either, as far as primordiality goes.
I'm just rambling. Anyways, I'm glad the weight, whatever it was, is gone.