I sit at my table in a café peacefully, watching faces as people walk past the window. Suddenly the music is turned up. It is uplifting, hypnotic music. It wants me to be happy. But it claws into my mind.
Recorded music is everywhere, in restaurants and stores and elevators, and it is almost impossible to escape it. The goal of its numbing repetitive rhythms are a harmonization of humanity on the lowest possible level, the mild drug-like pleasure of non-existence. It is used to manipulate states of mind, to exercise control, to stimulate desire. It is employed as a tool to distract people from the actual situation they are in.
Music feels good. It stimulates and inspires, but what parts of the brain does it enlarge? Does it reach celestial harmonies? Or does it inflame the libido, or the ego? If it unites people, it does so on the basis of shared pleasure and fantasy. It is most often employed as a tool to distract people from the real world they are in; and it makes understanding based on face to face communication almost impossible.
Targeted and marketed, planned and canned, recorded music
Almost all recorded music is supported and distributed by corporations, which do not judge according to humanitarian standards but by the profit motive.
Think about the extent of self-concern. Most songs, like most people, are self-reflective, self-conscious, concerned about pleasure, happiness, joy, or one’s own feeling of sadness, hurt, loss.
The music’s rhythm drowns out the true rhythm. It smothers and overwhelms the inside truth, enveloping it with desired conditions. It makes deep reflection and serious conversation almost impossible.