Monday, December 08, 2003

"Folk With A Beat"

I was noticing something last night, and I'm not even sure why it occurred to me or if there's any sort of etemological connection or not. The word "music" seems to have the word "muse" at its core, if you ask me. Is there some tenuous connection there, a link between the idea of personified inspiration and what is often one of mankind's most inspired forms of self-expression? Perhaps music is the chasing of the muse, following our inspiration where it leads us, down the road behind the great bluesmen.

Ever wonder where music really came from? Who figured out, centuries and centuries ago, that if you blew into this hollow thing just right, and covered these specific holes that happened to be in it, it would make a pleasing sound? Or that you could make noise with your mouth and throat that would also sound pleasing, which could express such emotion and life that you could lose yourself in it? Music almost can't be put into words. The lyricist's job, as with the job of the poet or the writer of any sort, is to attempt to put into words that which cannot be said, to express the ideas and emotions that all of us feel and yet cannot ever adequately explain to another human being. Theirs is a nigh impossible job, though occasionally you get someone--Lennon and McCartney, Harrison, Van Morrison, Dylan, Louis Armstrong and the like--who can tap into something basic in the human psyche and become an Everyman, the troubadore who carries the message of the people to the people.

I hope myself to be able to do that through my various artistic enterprises. If artists of words and pictures are the ones chasing the muse, expressing human inspiration and human longings, then I want to follow that path myself. I want to say what cannot be said, and instill the sense of wonder and awe in the world that I feel in others as well. I want to be the messenger who cannot be ignored or turned away, not just a voice crying out in the wilderness.

I want the world to see the muse dancing in my mind, and to follow the tune I set.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Gorillaz, "19/2000 (Soulchild Remix)"

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