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Sometimes I wonder why I stay on Gaia. As most everyone here knows, I spend the bulk of my time in the Music forum, and it hasn't exactly been full of deep, intelligent conversations for a while now. And I feel ridiculous commenting on trends that appeal largely to the younger end of the teenage demographic, or even worse, to pre-teens, like all this Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers s**t. I think I've heard one Hannah Montana song in my entire life, when I was shopping at Target. It sounded like she was imitating Hilary Duff's "Girl Can Rock", which wasn't exactly a glittering masterpiece to begin with, and I found myself wondering why in the hell anyone, child or adult, would want to waste valuable time listening to this crap. But I'm also baffled as to why so many people spend so much time posting about these singers/bands/corporate whores when the whole lot of them are so inconsequential. Sure, I may complain about the shittiness of the music, but I'm not the target audience anyway, and besides, it's not as though the world's going to end on account of one more lousy pop album.

I've also noticed recently how much ostensible music criticism has more to do with the performer's public image rather than their actual music. It was the often virulent reactions to Britney Spears's new album that prompted me to think about the subject more, but it's not just her; with anyone who has even the slightest profile, most of the comments have to do with them personally. For whatever reason, the vast majority of people (in the U.S., at least) have trouble separating the art from the artist (though maybe "art" isn't the best word to use in a lot of cases), and are entirely incapable of making purely aesthetic judgments. We also see this in the insane privileging of lyrical content over musical quality-- sure, it's easier to analyze lyrics, because they're concrete and often directly representational, whereas music is abstract and only imperfectly able to convey specific images or concepts (and then almost never directly), but that doesn't mean lyrics are more important than music. I'd far rather hear a great tune with bad lyrics than the most brilliant poem in the world set to shitty music; but sometimes I get the feeling I'm in the minority.

And yet I persist. Maybe I've just become so habituated to logging on and posting that I can't stop. Maybe I've got some deluded notion in the back of my head that I might actually change someone's mind about something one of these days. I don't know.

In any event, I plan to resume updating this journal regularly rather than letting it lapse for an entire month or more, as I've done twice now despite having more than enough ideas for entries to keep it going. Coming soon: reviews of Bee Movie and Silent Hill Origins, and more thrilling slices of my working life. xp