Musical New Year

So I am sitting here, staring at this blank screen (not really blank because I use a lined paper background, or something…). Yeah, it’s one of those things where I probably have tons of stuff to talk about but there is so much floating around that I don’t really see anything I want to clamp onto.

And here’s the thing, we all just went through the holiday season and what not. I imagine most of us have had our fill of family nonsense not to mention the new year new me bs. If you have spent any time here, I am sure you have probably realized by now that I don’t subscribe to much of any of that.

Which I think brings me to the thought of the day. What exactly is our drive here? I mean seriously, are we really so disgusted with ourselves and the world around us so much that we are constantly in this battle to improve. It’s like we are on a tread mill that never stops. The hamster wheel comes to mind. No matter how fast you run on the thing, you don’t really get anywhere.

So “new year, new me” BS, what do those of us who are marginally happy with our life and the people in it do? I mean seriously, it’s like we must be outraged that our friends are still our friends or something. And we can never measure up to the ideal we think they have of us.

Notice I said friends in there and not family. That’s mainly because no matter how you look at it family sucks and neither we nor them measure up to the potential our family thinks we need to fulfill. I’m not saying that having family and being close to them and loving them is evil or anything but if you have all that, wtf is wrong with you. Go out and get some healthy dysfunction for criminy’s sake. There is no hope for you and you have all my pity…

But I digress…

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Or maybe I don’t because I am just rambling really. See, cause now I am moving into something completely different.

I was riding in the car with my oldest daughter today. Her car, her music. This is important to know because we don’t always share musical taste. I have this weird thing that my kids are a combination of myself and my wife when it comes to music. They both like a number of styles that both my wife and I like separately.

So this is a running anecdote that really doesn’t tie into much. Or maybe it does. A song came on from a band that both my daughter and I like. Heck, she was the one who got me into the band anyway. And she mentions that she doesn’t care for the new album they put out. It’s too pop-py, she says.

I love this bit of technology where we can simply go to our device of choice and check stuff out. Sure enough, the new album is on Amazon Prime so I download it right then and there to my phone.

As I am listening to the songs, I realize I have heard one of them already through Youtube (our next modern marvel). But anyway, I am going through the songs and I realize that I have heard the style before. The band had transitioned their sound from a modern take on punk (which is only marginally punk in any of those bands) to a return to the synth pop of new wave.

Of course, I didn’t make the more concrete progression in my mind with this till right now but it followed that musical transition through the actual history of the music. When those styles first appeared, they had made their transition through different bands and now a single band is following its own version of the transition. Kinda neat.

I think I probably appreciate this a bit more than my daughter because I have the more historical perspective of the styles of music and their effect on our landscape. Or maybe I am just weird with really broad musical tastes.

Which brings us back to the original thoughts of the day. We are always in such a hurry to advance to the next level or what not. And in our process of trying to become more this or that, we forget that it is all cyclical. The hamster wheel is always going to return us to something we have seen before and the fight to get away is just moving that wheel faster and faster without actually getting anywhere.

Sometimes we should just stop and listen to the music, and enjoy it for what it is.

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