Despite our best intentions we are judgemental creatures.

We have been conditioned to judge, assess and categorize. By doing so we feel a sense of clarity around the unknown and it saves time. 

Maybe later on our experience of the new forces us to adjust our initial findings but this is often rare. 

For the majority a mind made up is fixed in place and nothing can prompt any change. 

Judgement is separation, boxing off in order to feel some kind of safety and few are prepared to step outside of it. 

People's choices are an indication of what 'floats their boat' and as such a way of gauging who they are at the core. 

It is especially true when applied to music. 

Finding out what genres, artists and songs somebody enjoys had been described as 'a glimpse into their soul' and I could not agree more. 

I know I have done it.

Back it the day (as if that was so terribly long ago!) I would scan the spines of the CDs and LPs on display at a new acquaintances home and form a mental picture if who I thought they were. They were critiqued as much on their omissions as they were the titles on display. Further probing would lead to the confessions of those guilty secret records. The songs we love to love yet hate to admit to owning. 

These were the ones I found the most endearing.  

Bearing in mind that we are only drawn to what resonates with us (Attraction) forming a picture based on our musical choices seems a valid yardstick.  

There is something about that piece that is us and that is why we need it. 

Now turn the other way and look at the creators of the music. 

What are they projecting that draws us in? 

For me as a listener and a fan what I want from music is truth and intricacy.

Valid, well placed, elegant intricacy. 

Sometimes I hear it in the lyrics, the vocals, the music or in the production. On those rare transcendent occasions when it is present in all of the above and I am inspired and moved, often to tears. 

Because I have felt other artists lengths, breadths and depths when it comes to creating music I know when I am personally skating on my surface. 

Mining and diving the unvisited recesses of my psyche and laying it all out bare is the most terrifying thing I can do, yet so heady and satisfying. 

I use those reticent moments when I am unsure whether I should 'go there' as a green light. Go,go,go!

I can write to rote and have frequently be asked to do so but it bores me to do so and bores me to hear it. This music is flat and unsatisfying as heavily processed, chemically laden 'food'.

While this is a great general exercise and a skill builder there is very little call for anything other than words to music that sounds a bit like so and so. The last time I was asked to do this I decided to sever the ties on that working relationship. 

The world does not need reductives but the demand is still there. 

Let it be fulfilled by others. 

Choosing to be so exposed and expanded  potentially sets me up as an easy target. Rest assured if you have ever told me a secret it is still safe with me but I am tired of living a cloaked, pretence of a life. 

This is something new for me because I want something new for me. 

Where I will find myself, or if I will remains unseen but I am compelled to follow the crescendo of my intuition. 

 

Love Yourself! 

Cx

Thanks for reading. 

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