It has often baffled me how Taylor Swift can be the voice of our culture and multiple generations, but then I went to a junior high choir concert the other day, the band played a song apparently written by someone with mental health issues and meant to inspire people against suicide, which was sadly appropriate as after the song selections for the choir I was feeling rather depressed and nihilistic. I remember singing one or two such songs back in my own early choir years of similar persuasion but this time it was every...single...song! We at least had a few Disney or show tune pieces in there, my elementary aged daughter has an upcoming concert with several painful (but chipper) childish ditties, but why was the junior high selection so extremely awful?! The better question is what does one sing about when the whole point of our existence is pointless? We are a culture and society happily building legos on the deck of the capsizing Titanic!
Music throughout time and history, culture and place has been a language, an art, an expression of feelings, sentiments, events, myth, legend, history, story, notions, and the essence of being far beyond what simple words can say. But like real art, Modern Music has replaced music as it should be. Now it is a discipline without rules, without borders, without meaning, a banana duck taped to the wall of life! The hum of my fan has more meaning than any random song of modern selection. I can understand why the kids weren't enthused to be singing (not that they are enthused about anything not of their own choosing!) about looking into their own souls for meaning (if they have one), finding all their future in dreams and hopes centered on a chaotic, meaningless universe, and finding all their purpose inside themselves and in their own visions. Ye can be gods! Yes, and what petty, miserable gods we be! No wonder a vocal artist with mediocre talents who mostly whines/sings about her pointless life and relationships is the epitome of our culture.
Some guy calling himself 'The Preacher' wrote about this a couple thousand years ago, and his book is still a best seller, so it isn't just a modern phenomenon, but something that wrings the heart of every mortal under heaven. John Lennon's 'Imagine' is the grand hymn to this worldview, and just as despair inducing as any of the lesser songs presented by our local student vocalists. We don't need to imagine, we live, as functional materialists, in a world where we assume 'there is no Heaven and no Hell,' but the problem is, nothing means anything in such a world! Our whole existence is based on the random fluctuations of subatomic particles set off at the explosion that began Stuff, (did you know hard core secularists are Calvinists!?) and nothing means anything because there is no meaning, point, or purpose, yet some deep part of ourselves demands there must be. So either the secular realists are wrong or some deep part of our being is. Back before the heady days of advanced scientific discovery, The Preacher remarked, 'God has set eternity in the hearts of mankind,' now obviously he didn't understand astrophysics or subatomic particles so what can he know?
But then what do all these all knowing scientific philosophers know? How is it Order arose from Chaos, or Something from Nothing, why isn't Chaos increasing to the point of Vacuum instead of being held in check that Order and Life can exist? Why does my deepest yearning turn towards Something, Meaning, Purpose like a compass needle to the North Pole? Why am I discontent in the 'Son of Man' revealed in Phil Collins' "Tarzan" soundtrack (catchy music, but if you actually dissect the lyrics there's nothing there!) but find boundless hope, desire, and interest in an itinerant Jewish carpenter of the same title who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey some two millennia ago? The crowds that hailed Him as King wanted the same things we brilliant moderns demand: I want it my way. They killed Him a week later because He said that wasn't the point of life at all, ironically fulfilling the entire point of this reality!
But our songs are still about nothing, as are our sad little lives, but they don't have to be. I am in no way saying that music is in any way artistically good or bad based on the meaning or contents, but rather that it can be intrinsically pathetic, even with the most catchy beat in the known universe, if it doesn't mean anything. I will be the first to tell you that there are some (lots actually) of really horrible Christian attempts at music out there, but I'd rather sing a 45 minute chorus of the worst Christian song I can think of than listen to 2 minutes of the inane drivel that passes for modern music (okay, maybe a little longer if it is Bon Jovi but only if you are working out to it and not really contemplating the lyrics), just like I don't own any modern art pieces, unless you count where the kids have left marks on the wall. But I'll leave you to choose the soundtrack to your own life, be it 'Amazing Grace,' or 'Imagine,' and your workout will proceed accordingly!
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