I want to preface this by saying that this is a reflection, and not intended as a prescription. My avoiding certain ideas and approaches is fueled by an evolving experience, and the way I project it.

Lately I feel myself becoming disillusioned by the way music is sometimes dismissed. In particular when abstractions overshadow the raw experience of sound. Music can invite discussion of culture, genre, theory, and our personal biases, but when things like this dictate the experience, I can't help but feel like something vital is lost.

Take a band like Muse; a band I was especially fond of in my early teens. For me, I think they're a band that reflects this. I have always felt that their music, like so much I loved growing up, carries a sense of aggrandisement. I believe though that it's an awareness of abstractions surrounding the music which gives that perception, and when you are young, you have less of an awareness of these abstractions. Rather than aggrandising, it just feels grand. But despite how it might feel now that I am older, I still feel that the sound itself is not asking us to take it seriously; in fact, it isn't 'asking' anything at all.

I think music often acts as a portal through which lots of emotional questions can be asked, but in the end it is a mirror; often it is our past selves that ask us to take a band like Muse seriously, to which our adult selves might reply, "No". These labyrinthine, abstract dynamics are often things we can’t help but consider as part of the music; abstracting is a very human thing. But, I feel it's always worth challenging that.

For a lot of my life, I have had a strange relationship with things that I enjoy. I carry shame, and my growth has been to let go of it. Anything that tests my ability to grimace and cringe has always held a special place for me, serving as one of the strongest arguments against shame. It quietens the voice telling me to resist, because of bullshit reasons. In the case of music, going back to the example of Muse, this would be for the way it feels like it has been so deliberately crafted to serve the purpose of feeling elated. But, with all of us having limited time on this planet, challenge yourself: Is there much of anything which hasn't been made in service of a similar purpose? I feel questions like that unravel abstractions, and can act as a form of mindfulness.

I don't think all abstractions are unhelpful. Even when music is "bad", which can be a stimulating thing to ponder, I think the process and attitude it holds in its creation resonates most with me. Its purpose and drive speak to my creative sensibilities, and unravel the notion of 'whether certain music can be taken seriously or not', for example.

I also can't help but think of the people in my life who have undoubtedly contributed to my mindset. I would say I was "saved" if only I knew what the alternative would've been without their influence. Some things simply make you who you are, to such an extent that you wouldn't be yourself otherwise. Some things are so monumental like that; they make what-ifs feel irrelevant.

There will always be a gulf between your perception and the sound. Your experience of the music is tangled in surrounding aspects, derived from internal and external influences, and it is necessary for some of those influences to colour your impressions to have any impression at all. But I think the vital things, that must not be lost, are the feelings that have been most directly derived from the impact of the sound.

We're blessed to engage with something so irreducible and irreplaceable. For as long as it lasts, so long as it can be invoked, remembered, and felt, we owe it to ourselves to listen to what it says, in the wordless way that only music can speak.