I Can't Feel the Music

I like music. I enjoy listening to a song. I particularly like the use of music in film or in an end of the year or Olympic montage video. Sometimes it even makes me misty. But music doesn't speak to me and I am a poorer man for this.

Perhaps you don't know what I'm talking about or maybe you think, "Jack ole buddy, you're being too hard on yourself." Or if you know me well, maybe you're saying, "You got that right".

While I like music I know that it doesn't speak to me on the same level that it does many other people. People like you, or at least some of you. I know this in the same way that I know that baseball speaks to me in a way that it doesn't speak to most of you.

When I look around me and watch people interact with music, listen to music and talk about music I sense a connection that I just don't have. I've tried to deny this at times, but the evidence is clear. I have an iPod. It's a hand me down. What do I do with it? I listen to podcasts. Spoken word podcasts. I haven't even added or deleted a song since it was given to me. A few times I've listened to the songs that are on there, but I'd say less than 2% of the time I've used it so far has been for listening to music. In my car, I usually listen to talk radio. If I do listen to music it's usually because I like the DJ's witty banter on that station and I'm willing to wait for the songs to end. Woe is me.

But at least there is baseball. I feel baseball. It's just a game to most people and I dare say a boring game at that. Not to me. For me it is so much more than a game just like to a music person a song is so much more than just a song. Me, I used to sing my kids to sleep by singing. What did I sing? "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".

Apparently parades don't speak to many of you either as my follow up parade post didn't inspire any witty commentary. I would like to follow up the follow up with another update. I went to another parade today and like the one I saw earlier this parade season there were huge gaps at times in the parade. Gaps in a parade are not new, but they seemed to be much more common and bigger than I recall seeing in the past. I think this is emblematic of the general degradation of the structure and order in our society. Nobody has any respect for parade marshalls anymore, just like every other authority figure. In fact as near as I can tell, the parade marshall job is either gone by the wayside or changed. Used to be they travelled up and down the parade and put a stop to any poor parading and fixed those gaps. Now they are nowhere to be seen. Shame on us as a society for allowing such a travesty.