(Trying to get the daycare kids to watch Pete's Dragon during quiet hours this summer was like trying to teach a parakeet to read.)
Today has started off brightly and industriously: I got plenty of sleep, was up at a not-half-bad hour, have a couple loads of laundry in, and took a brisk walk twice around the apartment community. Now I have to shower, tidy up, have devotions, and write the rest of my application for employment at the Maryland school.
A small thought that has been occupying my mind...
I seldom wish death on anyone, so if a small catastrophe like permanent laryngitis happened to settle on Celine Dion, and if by a strange chance an electromagnetic pulse globally and selectively wiped out of existence the body of her work, my mental health would be greatly improved.
Every month the Ann Taylor muzaktrack features one of her songs. Every month for a whole month I am subjected at least three times in a shift to a repetition of the most banal cliches of the English-speaking world. So many cliches that, in fact, the song becomes a textbook example of deconstructive repetition to meaninglessness. The harder I listen, the less sense the song makes, until internally I am screaming, What does that MEAN??? Well, really, it doesn't mean anything. And still is consumed by vast quantities of listeners, and forced on the rest. Kind of like store-bought bread, the mass-produced, pre-sliced, tasteless, processed, chemical-tasting kind.
My question is, do people actually listen to music anymore? Do they devote any thought to it, or is it just another opiate to dull the mind? And why settle for that?
7 comments:
Some people still listen to music and devote thought to it, but the muzak piped into stores is, I believe, specifically formulated to make you as dumb as possible in order that you might max out your credit card without realizing it.
After four summers of working at Boscov's, I lose 70 IQ points whenever I hear LeAnn Womack's song I Hope You Dance, and just stand there staring off into space and twitching until the song is over.
By the way, did you get that program I sent?
Bravo, bravo. J. Morgan and I couldn't agree more with your (always) well put sentiments.
did you get my email, que-sarah?
My problem is that I always get the muzac songs stuck in my head when I'm on the bar floor, and I carry them back out into the lobby humming them for hours.
I always thought Celine Dion was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Hurray, I'm in good company. I knew I could count on you.
And Matt, no, no program yet. However, the tightly efficient machine of the U.S. Postal Service breaks down somewhere west of the Ohio/Indiana border, so I'm not giving up hope.
Oh yes, and thanks for the e-mail, Gare bear! :)
I always thought Celine was a little odd-looking, myself.
Just so everyone knows, if you think the U.S. Postal System is inefficient, France's postal system has been on strike for the past two weeks.
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