Saturday, September 13, 2003
ok, i accidentally hit a key that somehow deleted everything i'd written.
both Johnny Cash and John Ritter died yesterday. it's a shame, i'm told, that i don't know any of Johnny Cash's music. but i do remember something i read in an interview with Cash (i think it was in Rolling Stone) that i found meaningful. in a response to a comment made by the interviewer about how Cash and Elvis are the only two people in both the Rock and Country halls of fame, Johnny responded by saying that he hates it when people pidgeonhole his music. he said that music should not be categorized as much as it is. and i agree. i think that one of the many, many problems with the culture of popular music, in this country anyway, is that consumers require all music to be divided neatly into genres. a person needs only to know what "kind" of music a band plays to know if they like that band or not -- hearing the actual music isn't even necessary!
thinking about it even more, i believe we can zoom out a little bit on this concept... the tendency to categorize applies not only to music but to PEOPLE as well. pretty much everyone i was surrounded with in high school endeavored to be a certain "kind" of person. jocks. skateboarders. art kids. nerds. the student body was pretty much sorted into a handful of huge inbred families. you make a covenant when you become a member of one of these cliques... you wear what the other people wear, you talk like they talk, and you listen to the music they listen to. music is one of the biggest tools people use to design themselves. i guess what i'm trying to say is that the way the system is set up, you can walk into the record store and buy a CD, and everyone is supposed to be able to know, judging by the band whose disc you just bought, exactly what kind of person you are, and whether or not you're cool. some bands serve as nothing but icons.
icons are really important to people, apparently. i have a peace sign on the back of my car. i also have a bumper sticker of a John Lennon quote: "I may be a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." i have another bumper sticker that i got from an art store in Albuquerque that i loved dearly: it says "Kiss an artist today!" apparently, these three items on my car combine to send the message that i'm a hippie and that i do drugs, and that i hate America. i've had people yell some pretty hateful things out their car windows at me because of this. i wasn't really thinking when i put those things on my car that they doomed me to a future of being stigmatized by my fellow motorists. i put the peace symbol on there because i think that world peace is something that humans should strive for. i put the John Lennon bumper sticker on because i like John Lennon, and i tend to be an idealist rather than a person who thinks that problems are best solved by political means. i put the art bumper sticker on because i wanted to support a local business. i didn't put these things on my car because i wanted to convey the exact kind of person i am, which is apparently why anybody in this world puts anything on the back of their car.
so i hope that people think about Johnny Cash and think for a little bit about conformity and stereotypes.
both Johnny Cash and John Ritter died yesterday. it's a shame, i'm told, that i don't know any of Johnny Cash's music. but i do remember something i read in an interview with Cash (i think it was in Rolling Stone) that i found meaningful. in a response to a comment made by the interviewer about how Cash and Elvis are the only two people in both the Rock and Country halls of fame, Johnny responded by saying that he hates it when people pidgeonhole his music. he said that music should not be categorized as much as it is. and i agree. i think that one of the many, many problems with the culture of popular music, in this country anyway, is that consumers require all music to be divided neatly into genres. a person needs only to know what "kind" of music a band plays to know if they like that band or not -- hearing the actual music isn't even necessary!
thinking about it even more, i believe we can zoom out a little bit on this concept... the tendency to categorize applies not only to music but to PEOPLE as well. pretty much everyone i was surrounded with in high school endeavored to be a certain "kind" of person. jocks. skateboarders. art kids. nerds. the student body was pretty much sorted into a handful of huge inbred families. you make a covenant when you become a member of one of these cliques... you wear what the other people wear, you talk like they talk, and you listen to the music they listen to. music is one of the biggest tools people use to design themselves. i guess what i'm trying to say is that the way the system is set up, you can walk into the record store and buy a CD, and everyone is supposed to be able to know, judging by the band whose disc you just bought, exactly what kind of person you are, and whether or not you're cool. some bands serve as nothing but icons.
icons are really important to people, apparently. i have a peace sign on the back of my car. i also have a bumper sticker of a John Lennon quote: "I may be a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." i have another bumper sticker that i got from an art store in Albuquerque that i loved dearly: it says "Kiss an artist today!" apparently, these three items on my car combine to send the message that i'm a hippie and that i do drugs, and that i hate America. i've had people yell some pretty hateful things out their car windows at me because of this. i wasn't really thinking when i put those things on my car that they doomed me to a future of being stigmatized by my fellow motorists. i put the peace symbol on there because i think that world peace is something that humans should strive for. i put the John Lennon bumper sticker on because i like John Lennon, and i tend to be an idealist rather than a person who thinks that problems are best solved by political means. i put the art bumper sticker on because i wanted to support a local business. i didn't put these things on my car because i wanted to convey the exact kind of person i am, which is apparently why anybody in this world puts anything on the back of their car.
so i hope that people think about Johnny Cash and think for a little bit about conformity and stereotypes.
