On Arts

do you know how to start an argument? here is one way:

a big problem i have with music as an art form is that it is simply too accessible. it's too easy for any single person to grasp it and enjoy it and appreciate it. it's too simple.
of course i've never played or created music so i guess that's a disclaimer (obviously it's not easy), but i think it's not complex enough, not nuanced enough, not--dare i say--sophisticated enough.
(clearly using these words i'm setting myself up for at least criticism and more likely scorn. that's ok. this is opinion after all. and surely it should be understood that i'm not belittling what musicians do or suggesting that they do not clearly possess impressive and enviable talents.)

to me, the arts--music, film, literature, painting/sculpture, or simple performance--are interesting and enjoyable because they are unscientific; they are necessarily impossible to parse out into exact parts or meanings. i think what i like most about arts is its pure expression. not necessarily what something is or is about but just how it feels, and part of the joy of claiming that feeling is finding something in the art that is real or shared and then "getting it." the process, the necessary process of personally finding the art, is for me the most important effect of the art.
many people would surely disagree here, but this is my problem with music, or my reasoning in deriding it compared to the other forms of high art: that quite often there is no process, that the essence of the music is immediately presented for you, that it's just too easy for anyone to appreciate it.
i'd like not to be completely elitist but unfortunately that's exactly what my last point is doing. it's unfortunate but not everyone in the world possesses the same gifts of intelligent discernment, so necessarily there should be some things will be beyond the realm of understand and certainly deep appreciation for much of the populace. music doesn't do this. it's too inclusive. don't get me wrong now, because this is the greatest thing about music, something people have always and should always point to in describing it's necessary value: that it crosses all social and demographic lines: everyone can enjoy it at it's deepest levels. it's like baseball or barbecue or television or any other parts of americana, everyone can share its experiences communally and this of course gives it tremendous populist value.
however, at the same time, it completely undermines it's artistic being. i'm not trying to discredit music's status as an art, just to differentiate it from the other forms of art, to perhaps decry the mere act of discussing it as you might another form of art. to me, discussing music as art is to express mere opinion because the form itself is too accessible so as to have nothing to argue about. if you like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich more than a grilled cheese, that's fine, but if you want to spend a lot of time telling me why a pbj is better than a grilled cheese, well that's just silly. a pbj is a pbj. they're delicious, lots of people love them, but let's not get carried away.

i'm going to pause now and acknowledge the difficulty i may be having in showing my point. likely the difference between music and film, music and sculpture, is simply a matter of my personal taste, which would make this whole essay a commentary on the value of all art as a starting point for discussion, rather than an explanation of the differences of stature within the world of artistic forms.

(hmmmm. now that i've about it a moment, perhaps the problem i'm encountering in being fair has something to do with the nature of our consumption of the musical art form, or the relative lack of breadth thereof. if i were to compare film to "music" then i could say sure many films are enjoyed by all and certainly wholly accessible to all, but you'd surely agree if i were to claim that many richer and (better) films are not really appreciated or gotten by the mass of the population. film like anything has a spectrum ranging from the highest exhaltant complex form down to the basest least-common-denominator unoriginal crap. with film, this whole spectrum of quality is often discussed publicly in the media. with music, the only types we ever hear about, therefore the only types we ever talk about on an individual level, is the baser, simpler, more easily accessible forms. there is a whole vast world of classical and extremely complex and difficult to ascertain music. this is not the type that is ever really seen or discussed outside a tiny sliver of aficionados. consider: citizen kane, widely thought to be the finest film ever made, was released to a national audience; the godfather films--surely not lagging far behind citizen kane on quality--are some of the most popular movies ever and we're subject to massive populist scrutiny even while being publicly judged for their quality (at the academy awards). what i'm saying is that the public discourse on film spans the entire spectrum of the form, while the discourse on music is constrained to the lower portion of it's breadth. what this means, if my thinking is consistent here, is that in the first several paragraphs of this essay, as i was having trouble condemning music without being hypocritical, what i was actually doing was condemning some music, which in light of what i've described about the film/music public distinction, is i believe more than fair.)

so, in the way we operate within the world, i find it somewhat silly, indeed impossible, therefore useless, to effectively carry on intelligent discussions about "music." and what i was saying at the top about not liking "music" because it's too accessible and not complex enough still stands because now i've figured out that there exists a distinction between music (everything) and "music" (the segment of music that we actually digest).

so i guess what we learn from this enterprise is that it indeed is an easy way to start an argument, so easy that i've just conducted one with myself.