Greetings fellow classmates! My name is Megan Ives and I am entering my junior year here at CU studying Physics and, recently added, Anthropology. Although these things have very little overlap in the world of existing careers, I am fascinated by their respective concepts of understanding what makes the physical world tick and what makes different groups of people tick. So here I am, going into my 3rd year at CU, trying to cram in enough credits to graduate on time, and this summer writing course seemed like a very foreign, but exciting idea to me. As far as my music tastes go, I can’t really pinpoint a specific genre that I am attracted to; I think I like music for the way it makes me feel. My Spotify playlists are across the board when it comes to genre. I am an open-minded listener, but am a very bubbly, upbeat person who is drawn to music that heightens those feelings. As a writer, I love to explore abstract concepts but often find myself struggling to express them in coherent ways to anyone other than myself. I am curious to gain some original insight from you all and to learn more about myself and music throughout this course!
In O’Steen’s article, I related well to the somewhat hypocritical idea that in the classroom, and social scenes more generally, some topics allow and encourage freedom in person taste whereas others discourage tastes outside of the perceived norm. O’Steen refers to this subjective determination of taste when he writes of the “superiority” some films have over others (25). I think most people can remember a time in their lives when they felt pressured to listen or watch what was thought of as cool by their peers. However, it did surprise me that O’Steen was very hard-headed in his opinion that there is a “Paradise”, or specific taste in music that people should have (25). I understand that this article was written in 1939, but it was shocking since I think these opinions are slightly taboo now, and broader music tastes are accepted out of political correctness and open-mindedness.
One of the most applicable concepts to this class, I think, is the idea mentioned that music is nearly impossible to define. O’Steen describes how it is categorized as what is “pleasurable to normal human beings” with the idea of normalcy being a very fuzzy line (25). Thus, in this course, we must open our minds to the limits of what is considered music and start thinking about abstract questions like how we define music, how we categorize music, and what causes our personal tastes in music. This article forces us to examine our conceptions about music, which I think is partially the aim of this class.
Writing on Music, Summer 2015 