| !@#$!% | |||
|
Thursday, August 22, 2002 ( 1:47 AM ) How does an individual's taste in music develop? I'm repelled by the thought of an absolute aesthetic that one perceives more or less clearly depending on their intelligence and critical facilities (mostly because that would place me deep within "bad taste", har har). Why is it that oldies stations, for instance, or my mom's Stevie Wonder records (since I'm on the subject), WVKO Colombus (which I seem to remember as an FM station that played contemporary "black" music, but now seems to be an AM station that plays gospel), certain Spinners songs that I'll forever associate with half-remembered wedding receptions, and PBS children's programming all form part of the set of sounds that appeal to me, personally? A huge part of it, it seems obvious, has to do with what I was exposed to in childhood; formative years for personal taste as much as anything else (although, of course, as Jess pointed out, this sort of development "NEVER ENDS"). But why don't (didn't) I feel the same way about my mom's Charlie Daniels or Moody Blues records? Why not the theme from the Smurfs? Is there any way to trace my way back to those very first incidences of preference? Well, no, not really. My memory is hardly Proustian; in fact, it sucks. Past a certain point it just boils down again to nature and nurture, genetics and the length of time I was breast-fed, and those link to music tenuously, if at all.
winter # |
|
||
