Andrew wrote:@Jordan great post! It is very interesting that there was little music you listened to before Joanna. Perhaps our fatigue with conventional pop is what intensifies the devotion with which we latch onto anything different. I know that the trajectory of my own musical discovery has been like a series of dislocations and relocations, where I'm ardently fanatic about one singular band, tire completely, then transfer the fanaticism onto something more mature or complex. I think I've reached the stage where there's fairly comprehensive mass of musicians I respect and adore, though (at the centre of which, of course, lies Joanna).
Andrew wrote:By the way, I would argue that gay folk do have to deal with gender politics, albeit in a different way. We're still brought up with certain notions on what men and women should be, and there's still gender conventions that affect our relations (penetration = domination, butch/femme paradigm etc), but whatever sexual need there is to repress and stereotype women isn't there, as our interactions with them are different. I think our most basic, juvenile convictions about women are still going to determine how we view them. Anyway, representations of realistic homosexual gender dynamics are completely absent from popular culture, so we're often forced into accepting heterosexual stereotypes as the default.
Andrew wrote:Interesting! I wouldn't have instinctively said that the whole pederastic relationship dynamic could have been replicated in mainstream modern gay culture, but it seems like a logical conclusion after reading that. While I certainly agree that make/female dynamics, if they even exist at all, are very fluid in gay relationships (at least, more so nowadays), I still think that even gay subcultures are going to hold certain views on what men and women should be. I don't think that gay 'community' is quite as aware of gender as it seems to think it is - I think there are still prevalent negative attitudes towards the transgendered, particularly transsexuals, for example - but that's mostly based on my personal experiences with it.
How do you think gay men, as a general group, are influenced in their attitudes toward women?
Andrew wrote:Hehe, fanaticism takes dedication - I've spent more time seriously and critically thinking about and doing research on Joanna's music than just about anybody else's. It'd probably be too exhausting to be fanatic about more than a few!
Exhausting and... unnecessary? Surplus to requirement? I don't know, I've got the artists I love and that's enough for me! I don't really need to listen to anyone else and no one else gives me adequate reason to listen to them, anyway. I could listen to all the musicians, but why would I when I can just listen to the ones who give me the most pleasure? Which makes me wonder if other people live in a state of constant musical bliss, turning on the radio and having a religious experience to every piece of assembly line pop and gimmicky electrical noise assault it offers, or if all music is mundane and unfulfilling to them but they don't know any better.
Andrew wrote:It's always been kind of strange to me, though, that 'moved to tears' seems to be, for most people, the primary criterion for appreciating art. Art has many functions, and beauty takes many forms! It's just a shame that I can't really physically cry at anything, no matter how much emotion it stirs. I do feel that overwhelming, bumblebee-belly sense of beauty when I listen to Joanna, though (not so much its physical beauty - what tends to affect me most are those perfect momentary musical and poetic expressions of loneliness or disconnectedness), so perhaps that's a form of internal crying.
Andrew wrote:As a side note (and out of curiosity), who's the artist you admire most, other than Joanna?
Andrew wrote:I really like your little Have One On Me graphic by the way...
@Jordan great post! It is very interesting that there was little music you listened to before Joanna. Perhaps our fatigue with conventional pop is what intensifies the devotion with which we latch onto anything different.
Steve wrote:Anyway - that diversion was only to say that my next comment is restricted only to 'P' music.
I actually find it much easier to relate to the more 'serious' end of the P-music spectrum when it is performed by female artists. Looking into my had (or heart) to analyse why this should be, I can only suggest that perhaps I subconsciously see women as the more emotionally complex, and more 'in tune' with their emotions, so that when singing (or playing) about topics relating to emotions, the sensations come through as purer and less forced or 'processed' than when a male tries to do the same thing.
I would have to study my list of favourites more closely to see whether I'd find that the best (in my personal opinion) songs by males were about topics were not priarily emotional, and that the converse was true of my preferred songs by female artists.
It's also probably a dreadful gender stereotype on my part, but if I was inventing a new language, and was told that it had to follow the 'gender' system common throughout European languages (but mercifully almost extinct in English), I would certainly assign the noun "song" to the ranks of the "eine" [feminine] gender, and almost certainly "music" would join it.
Now you are free to go ahead and call me a dinosaur, and snatch away that "nice guy" tag that I so enjoyed, even if only for a few hours...
Plato wrote:"Our music was once divided into its proper forms ... It was not permitted to exchange the melodic styles of these established forms and others. Knowledge and informed judgment penalized disobedience. There were no whistles, unmusical mob-noises, or clapping for applause. The rule was to listen silently and learn; boys, teachers, and the crowd were kept in order by threat of the stick. ... But later, an unmusical anarchy was led by poets who had natural talent, but were ignorant of the laws of music ... Through foolishness they deceived themselves into thinking that there was no right or wrong way in music, that it was to be judged good or bad by the pleasure it gave. By their works and their theories they infected the masses with the presumption to think themselves adequate judges. So our theatres, once silent, grew vocal, and aristocracy of music gave way to a pernicious theatrocracy...the criterion was not music, but a reputation for promiscuous cleverness and a spirit of law-breaking."
Laws 700-701a.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 27 guests