Album Title: Music Belies Meaning

I have such a strange relationship with music. I feel like it has taken such a large amount of my energy over the years... yet I periodically reject it in favor of other interests. Perhaps it's an aspect of my general flighty nature. I get excited, enthusiastic by political music, but I know that real meaning is not conveyed through what music gets played.

(That rhyme was unintentional. I promise.)

(If intentional I would have found a way to shoehorn "abeyance" and "conveyance" into the article. My word nerdiness knows no bounds, but my bad jokes, thankfully, do.)

Perhaps nothing better illustrates that than the band I posted above. Now, I love Propagandhi, despite the silliness and the preachiness and all the -nesses that make them, objectively, not a terribly good band. But they defined a clear period of my life, in between hating different musical types. On that very album is the song Anchorless, which I alternatively hated and loved.

(I'd go on to hate and love John's next band, The Weakerthans. Currently I love them again.)

(Wait, maybe... No I love them.)

I'm not sure what it is about this medium that makes me vacillate between extremes. I don't do it with my (more serious?) intellectual and spiritual pursuits. I don't suddenly "hate" Sufism or get all into Glenn Beck. Why does music cause such a flux in what I like? I dont even do it with things that really do deserve some of my creative scorn, like science fiction, fantasy, or poetry.

(Honestly if anything poetry would deserve the kind of waffling that I give to music. Why do I still like Gary Snyder? I just do. Why do I not heap some scorn on Ferlinghetti for his later work? I can't, that's why!)

Maybe it's a two-fold problem. Music is both more ubiquitous and more intimate than other ideas. I can step back from my politics and think, but music is always there. Songs get played over and over, and they get into my brain. Maybe the omnipresence of music is the problem.

I'm going to try and keep my perspective here. Jaime's current favorite is mewithoutyou, and I felt myself falling into a strange dislike of them. Then I realized I was being ridiculous, and I was just too used to them. They are a great band. Once again they are a soundtrack to a certain period of my life, but still hold meaning for me today.

In fact, check them out. They're awesome: