So I just watched this mash-up that incorporates all the popular music from 2012, and something struck me as I realized I didn't know (nor much care) who many of these performers were. Once upon a time, back in my "I'm gonna be a rock star" days, I was so aware of the popular music culture that, at my (then) job at the Hastings Music in the Galleria, I once helped a customer find a song she was looking for before she even hummed a single note (and believe me, some of those "It kinda goes like this" moments were - shall we say - interesting).
What struck me, though, was how comparatively detached I am now from today's popular music culture. Sure, you could answer that statement with "That's because it all sucks...", but it doesn't all suck. Don't get me wrong, some of it sucks horribly, and the fact that it's so popular is a dismal indictment of the values and tastes of whomever it is that supports this stuff to the point that it stays "popular" - but I digress.
What struck me is that the whole music thing seemed so intensely important to me back then. Having said that, I say again, don't get me wrong. I'm one of those people that may not have made it through my 20's if it weren't for music, both playing it and listening to it. To this day I have some form of music playing almost constantly. It's nearly as essential to me as air. But I don't get my identity from it any more. Back then, with my hair past the middle of my back, gas-station-special mirrored shades, ragged jeans, concert tees and callouses on my hands from working out behind a drum kit no less than three nights a week, "music" meant hard rock or heavy metal - because that's where a lot of my identity lay. Or so I believed.
It's funny - we think a lot of things when we're young - things like "older people are just out of touch." I look back now from my current vantage point three decades on, and I realize with a bit of surprise that it was actually the younger me that was out of touch., Had you suggested that to me then, of course, I would have scoffed and dismissed you as just another one of those out-of-touch middle-aged dudes (or dudettes). But the gravity of life; the realities of being an adult; the things that truly gives deeper meaning to life? Nope. Didn't have half the clue that I thought I did. Good lord, I'm still working on all that. Still, I see a lot of things a bit more clearly now, and I tend to take them a bit more seriously as well.
To whit...
My 5-year old daughter is now rolling down the tracks, and the cultural influences that are going to bombard her as she grows are substantially different than those of my childhood - but, in many ways, also strangely the same. I have no doubt that, in her eyes I will be seen as hopelessly-out-of-touch at some point in the not too distant future. I also wonder if I will live long enough to see that perception right itself. Who knows?
Has it ever struck you as absolutely over-the-top surreal how popular some performers are? The fans will swear up and down that it's about the talent that performer has, but I'm here to set that record straight today - it ain't about talent. I've seen entirely too many insanely talented performers and musicians never get a single break. Yes, there are some extremely talented and popular performers out there, and God bless 'em. But there are also some extremely popular performers out there who's talents actually lie in marketing and spectacle, and the music is almost irrelevant.
But, to come full circle, maybe that's how it's all supposed to work. At twenty, we think we're all wise and grown up and the world is our oyster. Then we get to thirty and think, "Man, if I only knew then what I know now, 'cause now I really do know it all." Then, somewhere between thirty and forty we begin to realize just how much we don't know, probably never will, and (here's the real kicker) how many of our perceptions of life were and are illusions. And then we have to decide what to do with that knowledge.
Meanwhile the twenty-year-olds look at us and laugh and shake their heads. If they only knew. Perhaps it's God's grace that they don't...
