Friday, March 12, 2010

"Situational"

An epiphany, as it occurred to me, that people tend to try to make all situations equal, so often, without taking individual circumstances into account. I, myself do this often.

When you're raised in a manner that you only see the same set of instances repeated, you tend to assume certain actions are associated with those instances and if you're not attentive to the people involved, and if you don't look at the surrounding factors you are bound to misinterpret the full effect of the situation.

Here is an example;

When I was much younger than I am now, much more selfish, ignorant and hot(though that's not the important part), I had a natural aversion to half of the music that was available to me. I was never interested in top 40, I detested country and rap and "techno," and sought out only hard rock, metal and whatever genre you consider the likes of the bluesey female singers I'd heard of, such as Fionna Apple and Joss Stone.
I was taught to have a particular taste in music and I never questioned it. I think it probably took a long time, as it may with most girls, to get over the idea that everything I did had to make mommy happy.
If something caught my ear and my mom wasn't a fan, at first I didn't buy the CD. Then, the older I got, I requested the CDs anyway, my mother accepted my tastes and was supportive about my interests.

My husband and I bonded, when we first met, over the likeness of our entertainment tastes. We enjoy the same humor, the same music, the same movies and books and televison programs. Because of this we've introduced each other into a lot of things. That's something that has welded our relationship together over the years. More-so, is the things of that nature that we've discovered we enjoy together.

Lately, however, we've had limited exposure to new things with a strict budget firmly in place. My solution has been to look upon the types of things my friends have been listening to. Lately, I've gotten into some of the music that was on the radio as I was growing up. I'm noticing I can relate to or appreciate the sentiment behind the music of TLC, Salt N' Peppa, Snoop Dogg,Dr. Dre, etc and because of that, I've had the urge to listen to 311, a band I've always liked but fell in love with in beauty school when I learned well the secret behind much of the content and could relate. Chris enjoys 311 and Sublime, another classic I've been craving, and he even tolerates Ballyhoo!, who my Tree turned me onto due to their obvious influences from the two most fore-mentioned bands. What he can not tolerate is the old R&B and rap I've been craving.
My neighbor and friend, Jen, is very much into country western and southern-fried-rock. I've been able to pick up on some things over the years that I enjoy from those genres and like sub-genres. For example, Allison Krausse is a very talented Blue-Grass vocalist. A couple of years ago she created an album with Robert Plant, the singer of Led Zeppelin, called Raising Sand. I listened to that CD every day for months right after I had Taven. Some of the things Jen listens to makes me want to leave the space intended for ear-shot of whatever happens to be playing.

I always thought I hated country. What a bunch of whiny, drunk, dumb red-necks! But when you're raised on metal and the likes, and those are the type of people you surround yourself with, you're bound to hear that opinion a time or two, or a dozen, a score, whatever. It's a stereo-type.

One time, most of us in some way have been guilty of saying this; I'm not interested in what this artist has to say because they don't say it in a way that appeals to me, you shouldn't listen to them either because I'm around you and I don't want to hear it.

I've discovered my true aversion to country music is the way some artists play the guitar in some or all of their songs. I do enjoy the sound of the guitar almost as a rule, but that twangy-twang-twang is just so unappealing to my ears that I can almost always guarantee you that I will not be happy about having to hear it. Even on the Raising Sand album I still occasionally cringe, and that album is not worth missing if you like either of the involved vocalists.
Chris is not a fan of country as a rule, either, though he holds dear a few songs or artists that his mother was a fan of. He, also, is a fan of Raising Sand, that's one we discovered together. (=
What is his aversion? I don't know. What I do know is that he becomes terribly annoyed when I want to listen to Faith Hill's "Cry."

He and his friends were close and tight-knit in their developing years and they're all bold, out-spoken and tease each other endlessly. It's very macho, even with some of the girls. Perhaps this is his source of hostility. The buddies wouldn't approve. Perhaps it's geographical. Maybe that twang offends his ears as well.

Perhaps because I'm always dreaming up something fabulous that I want from my life, I've just now started paying attention to these little truths. They fascinate me, truly. I've consistently marveled at these strange revelations as of late.

I take it as a sign that I need to be in school.
Just as my recent fortunateness with my finances has been sign enough for me to start my own business.

We've found an investor and a partner. If you pray, do so for me. I'll be praying that a few good people will finally have good things coming their way with some consistency.

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