Almost everybody I know seems to feel that life without music isn’t worth living.
But not me. It isn’t so much that I don’t like music as that I am completely indifferent to it. Some I mildly enjoy, some I mildly dislike, but all of it I will tune out after about 15 minutes.
Music does not speak to me in any emotional way (and Baglady probably considers this my biggest flaw as a human being, seeing as she comes from a musical family).
I’m 25 years old and went to my first concert earlier this year (for Baglady). It was fun, but because it was a good show, not because I liked the music.
So, I guess my point is that I could easily live in a world where music suddenly ceased to exist, and more than that, I probably wouldn’t even notice.
It is ok for an intelligent person to not like sports, it is ok to not like reading fiction, or to not enjoy travel, or to hate the outdoors. All the things I consider essential to life.
But nobody ever accepts that I don’t care for music. They all just assume I haven’t heard the right genre/band/singer.
Is there anybody else like me out there? Am I just a lonely freak?
I don’t think you’re a freak, but I think that you’d definitely notice a world without music. It’s much more a part of our lives than most of us realize.
I love music, so I’m biased here, but I think that the ability to hear and enjoy music makes us uniquely human. (I realize that other animals can hear music, but do they understand what it is, other than noise?) Perhaps you’ve not found a genre that you like, or a song that moved you, or made you want to sing along.
BTW, you are the first person I’ve ever heard say (IRL, or online)that they don’t like music, in one way or another.
As I’ve said, that is what everybody says. But I’ve never found a piece of music that moved me even a little bit, I doubt I am going to find something that moves me a lot.
But even if I do, it will be just one piece of music. Music as a whole still won’t interest me.
Unless I am forced to pay attention there are two possible outcomes of playing music in my presence:
It will annoy me; or
Within 10 minutes my brain will be filtering it out so that I don’t even notice. I have been in bars with live bands where I didn’t even realize that there was a band playing until someone mentioned it. Music is just so much background noise to me.
I thought I was the only one who could care less for music. If its on I’ll listen to it for awhile, but I dont have a radio or CDs. I cant name many singers, but I do watch The Real World and Daria on MTV. In White Men Can’t Jump they talked about listening to music and feeling the music. I guess I just listen to it.
I can’t remember lyrics, song titles, or band names. But I enjoy listening to a variety of music. I did have one weird non-music experience:
I was at a local grocery store where they played muzack (of which I’m not a fan, but hey) very softly. I had my goodies and was standing in line, all fine with the world. In mid-song, the muzack stopped. The reaction of everyone, myself included, was unsettling. We started to fidget and eye each other, not quite sure what was wrong. I wanted to get out of there FAST. It felt like a food fight was about to break out. Someone mentioned that the muzack had stopped and while that eased the tension a bit, it was still palpable. Finally, the muzack started again and people stopped fidgeting and squeezing their bread loaves. (Either that, or we aligned our tin hats in the right direction.) It made me realize how pervasive music is in our society.
If you dont like music, there must be something wrong with your brain, and I mean that, seriously.
A large part our brain is related to musical apreciation.
You see our brains operate in oscilations and musical beats duplicate that rythym, making our brains operate better and calming us.
A lot of other animals use music, birds sing and whales speak as if their singing.
It’s an intergeral part of being human, even the most basic civilizations had music.
I aprreciate what good music is, and as a general rule I can distinguish between good music and bad music. I have the greatest respect for people can produce good music. I am amazed by what Eric Clapton can do with a guitar or Pavarotti with a voice. I just don’t derive any particular pleasure from the music.
I do like music, muchly, but I think that most people’s appreciation of it comes from a societal standpoint - like the muzack “incident”. It’s like a aural conversation piece sometimes; if your mind goes completely blank in any situation, just mention a type of music and you’ll get a response. And it’s a comforting white noise. Beyond that level, I don’t think nearly as many people love music that much.
I can’t tell you if you’re normal or not, but I do know that music is a big part of my life. It can soothe me, get me excited, change my moods in all kinds of ways. If I’m having a crappy day, all I want to do is to come home and listen to music and tune out the world. On days when the radio is playing all of my favourite songs on my way to school, I just know it’s going to be a great day! I am in sync with my universe, and somebody out there loves me.
In my younger days (before I had kids and could still tune out the world) I lived for turning on my walkman, and just listening to music.
My mother actually disliked music. My poor dad loved his oldies station in the car, and their battles over the radio - he trying to put it at a level where it could be heard above breathing, her wishing it could be chucked out the car entirekly - were legendary.
A friend from High School once askeed her about this, failiing to understand someone who actually disliked music. She asked her about music iin a movie, and my mom said, in all seriousness, that music prominently in a movie would make her not enjoy the movie.
So of course, I work for a record company and have 3,000 CDs!
Yer pal,
Satan
*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Three months, three weeks, two days, 3 hours, 44 minutes and 36 seconds.
4566 cigarettes not smoked, saving $570.78.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 1 day, 20 hours, 30 minutes.
“Satan is not an unattractive person.”*-Drain Bead (Thanks for the ringing endoresement, honey!)
This is quite true. I don’t ever remember NOT having music in my life.
To be honest, it doesn’t really bother me that the handsome mr. bagfusciatrist isn’t into music. What does bother me though, is when he gives me a dirty look when I start singing to the car radio. When it’s a good song, I just ignore his glares and smirks.
When I tell people in real life that I don’t like music they never believe me. So the lie I have come up with (which may contain some truth) is that as a kid if I was awake I was reading.
I could rake leaves and read. I could watch TV and read. I could eat and read. I could take a bath and read.
I could NOT listen to music and read. I don’t know how much of this is true (as I don’t remember EVER having any enjoyment for music at any age) but I have often wondered if music and reading were competing for the same part of my brain and music lost.
The great irony was that I hung out with band people in high school so I had to constantly lie about how much I enjoyed there noises.
Satan: its is often but I can empathize with your mom. Usually I am indifferent but ocassionally just the mere presence of music, of any type, will send me into a sour mood.
He’s a writer.
You must feel left out sometimes
when people talkes about music.
Actually I never heard of anybody who don’t enjoy music.
But, we can’t all be the same and like the same thing
in our world, that should be boring.
Author of “Prince of Tides”, “The Lords of Discipline” and “The Great Santini” (and probably others), at least 2 of which have been made into movies.
I personally love music, (I love to perform choral music–I’m a decent alto) but don’t need to hear it played all the time. In fact, I usually turn the radio off as soon as the previous shift has left when I am at work. I seldom turn on the car radio. I only play my CD’s when I’m in a certain kind of mood. Why? Don’t know. It just puts me into sensory overload to listen to music for too long. I get really edgy. Same with TV or being in a room with a lot of conversations going on. I have very sensitive hearing and can’t take very much noise, or very loud noises at all. My brain must process such things differently than most people. I sometimes wonder, if things had gone just a little differently during my fetal or embryonic stages, might I have been autistic?
I am amazed by the complexity of classical music, and I am complete awe of anybody who has mastered it in any way.
But after 15 minutes I am no longer listening to it. I enjoy the symphony as an evening out, but 15 minutes after the performance starts I am no longer particularly aware of the music, I have retreated into my mind and am thinking about everything and anything else.
But it is definitely easier to listen to than most rap, certain areas of country, and all of Indian pop.
I would say I like about 20% of the music on the radio, the rest is crap (IMHO) the older I get the higher the percentage of crap I hear. I would imagine that most people over 50 would agree with this.
