listening to Christmas music; life and hope

11:12 PM 12/18/10

a pleasant evening reading harry potter and listening to christmas music...

That doesn't sound like me, but it's the truth, that's what I did. (I usually hate Christmas music. Reading Harry Potter, however, isn't at all unusual for me.)

I'm underemployed right now. McDonald's had to cut everyone's hours, so I'm working fewer days. (Although today when I went in to work, there was hardly anyone there, and so everyone was running around doing all the work that the missing people would have done.) I have more time off to work on learning Mark Forster's time management systems. I don't trust myself, because I've tried to do self-help books in the past, and after a while, I always abandon them and go back to living my normal life. I'm afraid that will happen when I get my hours back at McDonald's and when I get another second job again. I'll be too busy working to do anything but work and sleep.

However, during these few days of having more time off, I did a couple of projects, and I was encouraged by reading the time management book and his website. Even though I'm not yet following the instructions exactly, I'm using some of the ideas, like the 'Current Initiative.' You choose one important project that will move your life forward somehow. It has to be something that will improve your life in the long run. It can't be something like 'do the laundry.' He recommended that you use the current initiative to: 1. fix a malfunctioning system, 2. clear out a backlog (a big pile of old stuff that you haven't finished, for instance a big box of old mail and papers), or 3. get a project up and running. You do something first thing every day on the current initiative. You can work on it for only five minutes if that's all you can do that day, it's all right as long as you do something.

In the last couple days I set up my bookkeeping table again, to keep track of my money and my bills. Then my next project was to get some supplies, just a few things, to be ready for a snowstorm. That's all I've done so far.

It makes me feel much more relaxed when I know that I can, and will, do something, even just a small project, that I say I will do, that I want to do, that will help me in the future in some way. Being more relaxed, I can actually enjoy the time I spend having fun.

So this evening I went to the bookstore and read Harry Potter again, while the Christmas music played on the intercom. I've quit caffeine again, and today, I had a cup of decaf coffee at work, so I had a small amount of caffeine, but mostly I was off it. When I'm off caffeine, I listen to music differently. I tolerate music that's slower and more mellow and less exciting. When I'm more hyper, I get impatient with the mellow music. I still love dance music and exciting music when I'm off caffeine, but I can listen to a wider variety of things. For instance I often listen to choral music on the Christian music station, and I tolerate that best when I'm calm.

I've hated Christmas music for years. It's the same songs over and over that I've heard a million times. I might as well listen to 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' or 'Happy Birthday.' The songs are so familiar that they are intolerably boring. And I don't celebrate Christmas, and I am an atheist, and I don't believe in Santa Claus.

Actually, a few days ago, there were toddlers playing the violin, at Barnes & Noble, and they were playing variations on 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.' They have had people playing live music at the bookstore because of all the Christmas shoppers. So I did actually hear that particular song.

But I am hearing some songs that I'm not familiar with, or songs I've heard once or twice, or I'm hearing the couple of Christmas songs that I actually like. I will try to remember them. I like 'Me and My Drum,' or 'The Drummer Boy' or whatever the title is. It reminds me of the 'I am nothing, but I will give you whatever I have to give,' that feeling that I was talking about, with the Giving Tree, except it's not as destructive as the Giving Tree, because the drummer boy doesn't lose anything by playing his song for baby Jesus. He's just doing his best at the one thing that he can do well.

I heard one which I think is called 'Snow,' and it's a sad song. I googled the lyrics for it but I don't remember them. Something about how 'I looked out and there was snow, on the little park where we used to go, I thought I heard you calling me but there was nothing there but snow...' I can only remember bits and pieces of the song. (Found it again - Snow, by Saint Etienne.)

I think I like 'Oh Holy Night.' I also like 'Angels We Have Heard On High.' I like those for their melodies.

I don't like songs about Santa Claus. Santa Claus is the worst part of Christmas for an anti-Christmas person like myself. (Tom Flynn, 'The Trouble With Christmas,' was the book I read.) I heard a song that offended me, which was all about Santa Claus's Party. It talked about how, if you're good, you'll get to go to see the shop where they make the toys, and also, you'll get to take a ride on the reindeer. And the Christmas tree is so tall it goes up into the sky. How can I get in to his party? It says, you don't even need a ticket, you only need a smile, or a grin, or something like that. To me it sounds like a bunch of false promises. (I found out that other people hate this song too. It's mentioned here: http://snarkphoenix.15.forumer.com/a/songs-you-hate_post206-420.html)

Found the lyrics here. I can just imagine a whiny little kid asking Mommy, 'Can we go to Santa's Party? Why not???'

Another one that I didn't like was 'I'm a happy little Christmas Tree,' or something like that. The tree was GLAD that somebody came along and chopped it down and put it in a house. It was all proud of the decorations and lights all over it. Me, I'm thinking that in a few weeks, this tree will be all dried out and dead, but it would have survived if only somebody hadn't come along and chopped it down. I wouldn't be very happy about that.

I'm enjoying the style of the music. It was at Barnes & Noble, and I liked their choice of style. It was 'old-fashioned.' The music was melodic and it was done with a symphony orchestra, violins and horns and all that. I don't necessarily like 'old-fashioned music' as such, or all the time, but I'm trying to learn something from it, to answer questions about popular music, and popular culture, and why I don't like today's music.

A lot of today's music is done entirely with synthesizers and drum machines. I love Propellerhead Reason, that computer program, and it uses synthesizers, but you don't HAVE to write music where the drums are all perfectly mechanical and perfectly in rhythm. Absolute perfection doesn't make you want to get up and dance. When the drummer plays imperfectly, just a tiny bit off, it's surprising and hypnotic and it makes you start to dance whether you want to or not. The imperfections of the beat make it more hypnotic than the mechanical perfection of a drum machine. I read about that when I was learning how to use Reason, and they explained why you might want to use a 'groove,' a setting that lets you make the drums slightly less perfect, less mechanical in their rhythm. After reading about that, I observed that yes, live drummers sound better to me than drum machines.

Also, 'compressed' sounds do get old after a while. People using synthesizers usually compress the sound, so that it's a loud, full, strong sound that stands out above the background. However, with real instruments, and with old recordings, and analog, 'unplugged' music, you don't have all that compression. The sound is weaker and quieter, but it doesn't bore me as much. This is another thing that I read about, and agreed with, while learning to use Reason.

I listen to these songs so that I can learn what's good and bad in music, what I like and dislike, what I want to hear, and what to avoid doing if I would write music.

I'd like to put 'write music' as one of my projects, but when I get back to working two jobs, I will hardly have any time or energy for it, and I will prioritize other things instead. Again, I'm doubtful about whether I'll be able to continue trying to use time management techniques and self-motivation techniques when all my time is spent working and sleeping. I'll see what happens.

I'm reading Harry Potter again, and I've already read the books several times, and seen the movies a hundred times and memorized them. I'm looking at those and wondering what she did, and why I like them so much. It's true that some of the reason why I like it is because so many other people like it too. I don't usually like things that are very popular, or rather, I grew up trying not to - I had contempt for a lot of popular fads and trends at school - and I didn't want to 'conform' to 'peer pressure,' but somehow I love Harry Potter even though a million other normal people love it too. I can't know much about someone based on whether they like Harry Potter. One of the people at McDonald's who I like a lot, someone who always has something interesting to talk about, he says he doesn't read Harry Potter at all and isn't the least bit interested in it. And a lot of the people who like it are people who I wouldn't get along with. But I still get a feeling of community from liking something that's popular. I might not like it as much if I were reading it all alone.

That used to happen whenever a movie would come on TV, if there was a movie that I already had on videotape. There would be a movie that I already had, at my parents' house, like, for instance, 'Ghost,' the one with Patrick Swayze. But if it came on TV, suddenly I would want to watch it, because 'somebody else' decided that it would be on at that time, and because I felt like the rest of the world was watching it too at the same time. It didn't feel the same if I just put in the videotape and watched it alone whenever I wanted to. I felt more lonely that way.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out the reasons why I like Harry Potter so much. It's full of life and people, animals, and objects, and plants, and social institutions, and it's never cold and boring. I'm trying to understand what she did to give it so much life, so that I can do that myself.

I also heard 'Oh What A Night (December 1963)' recently, and that's another one that I love.

One thing that I will complain about, where today's hip-hop music doesn't make me want to dance, is the 4/4 beat. I like to dance to a 6/8 beat, or a 3/4 beat (yes, they're different, you don't 'reduce the fraction.'). I also loved the 9/8 beat in one song on my Celtic music CD which I can't recall the name of - 'Silver Apples of the Moon,' that's the name of the CD. There's a 9/8 beat (called an Irish Slipjig) in the second half of a song where they play two songs one after the other, and it's on harp and hammered dulcimer. I always danced to that one. When those kind of beats come on I want to get up if I'm sitting down. But a 4/4 beat doesn't do much for me, unless the song is great.

I guess I danced to a lot of 4/4 songs in the past. But they had more melody to them, more expression, more passion. The songs were ABOUT something. I often feel that all the life has gone out of the music, because the mind control system closed down over us and made us all into slaves, and no one can use their minds anymore, and no one can tell the truth, and no one can talk about taboo subjects like joy and freedom and excitement and hope. The movies are like that too, especially the cartoons. We don't have movies like 'The Secret of Nimh' now. (I looked at that book when I visited West Virginia. Wahhhh, spoiler... one of the dead rats at the end seems to be one of the nicest characters, but we never find out for sure if it was him. I hated that. I forgot all about that until I looked at the book again.)

It's strange, I'm 36 years old. If I talked about my past, to a younger person, they would see it as the distant past, some time long ago that they can't imagine. But for me, I still feel like there's hope that I can get those things back, those feelings, dancing to the music I loved (I don't want to play loud music or dance when I live in a top floor apartment), being free and being able to do the things that I want to do. To me it doesn't seem like the past, it still seems like the future, like I am going to do those things again. Someday, all the hope will be gone, and when that happens, I will die. I will live as long as there is the slightest hope.