Internet down. So many things come to a stop. Streaming music, daily news, emails all
disappear. It will be back up in a
bit. But it’s good to notice the hum of
life without what for half my life we never had and never missed.
Two hours later. Internet’s
back on. Everyone’s at the kitchen
table. Homework on a Sunday. I made a bowl of gnocchi with tomato sauce,
parmesan cheese some leeks for the hard working ladies. I peeled and pulled with my hands at a big youzi (a.k.a. a pomelo) and separated
the fruit from the rind and tossed that in a big bowl as well. A smaller bowl holds some peeled mandarin
oranges. I always make a big smoothie in
the morning that’s strictly fruit and veggies.
Accordingly no one touches it but me.
Music is cranking. I
am enduring. We are not listening early
70’s funk from Benin. Nor is it a
swingin’ bop set from the late 50’s. Avril
Lavigne’s latest creation is on, loud.
This was a Christmas present to my younger daughter from her older
brother. His heart was in the right
place. The intent was to challenge the
overwhelming popularity of E.X.O., the half Korean half Chinese boy band that
they are otherwise enthralled by. He’d
taken them to see her in Tokyo a few years back so the soil was fertile. This will not be a Sunday of 老调重弹[1]
We have “Here’s to Never Growing Up” on at the moment. I feel like the village idiot in the corner
laughing to myself. No one else seems to
be catching the lyrics. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/avrillavigne/herestonevergrowingup.html
Singing Radiohead at the top of
our lungs
With the boom box blaring as
we're falling in love
Got a bottle of whatever, but
it's getting us drunk
Singing, here's to never growing
up
We'll be running down the street,
yelling "Kiss my ass!"
I'm like yeah whatever, we're
still living like that
When the sun's going down, we'll
be raising our cups
Singing, here's to never growing
up
What to make of this?
Cliché piled upon cliché. Vague
wafts of authentic suburban frustration, hints of something like real defiance,
packaged, and over produced into Twinkie-tunes that offer my daughters junk
food sustenance, and Maybelline identities.
I am both relieved and disappointed that there is nothing truly
threatening beyond the soma-like banality of it all.
And it is in English. I am sensitive to this and like my stepson I
want to encourage their interest in music sung in English. The not-so-subconscious assumption here is
that the western music tradition, the grand progression of all folk, classical,
blues, jazz, rock, punk, hip hop that spawns from the western tradition is
richer and better somehow, than the
musical traditions of North Asia. That
you’ll need to understand something about “cool” if you’re going to be a
refined post-modern global citizen. And
it is difficult to really learn about it, with J, K, C or Z-pop.
And I appreciate that the subconscious seems arrogant and
presumptuous (though perhaps still correct) in the cold light of print. I’m sensitive to this. If the tunes they listen to are in Chinese or
Korean, I’m much less likely to understand what is being said. I have to look it up. I am somewhat more sensitive to commenting on
something in another language. But the
music doesn’t need translation and I’m quicker to dismiss it, because it
clearly isn’t funky and I don’t see it burgeoning or rooted in anything very compelling. But what do I really know about musical
“underground” in any of these regional countries?
When it’s Avril it’s much more straightforward. Ms Levigne’s lyrics are like being set up for
a canned laugh on a sitcom that I have never watched but already know and it is
very difficult to resist the urge to mock it.
And of course if I’m interested
in anything other than a mockery as default discourse with my daughters, I
must. Frank Sinatra-parents hated the
Beatles and my parents thought punk rock was abysmal and so it goes. I have surrounded them with varied music all
their lives and the only thing to do is let their own tastes evolve and hope to
meet them up around the bend, when their tastes mature and hopefully they
develop that sense that music is broadly fascinating.
Meanwhile, wonderfully, it hasn’t all been written. Hopefully they’ll get their hands on
something truly blows me away and
makes me reconsider what popular music, or genuine protest or the conflation of
media might be. I think I’m even open to
it being from here. It’s not exactly
“Hope I die before I get old” but sure, “here’s to never growing old.”
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