A passionless society

In between trying to ignore the fevered pitch of the “debate” about health care reform and a growing interest in the television show “Fringe” (even if it’s only for how it reminds me of “The X-Files”), I realized that lately, I’ve written almost exclusively about politics.

The columns I’ve attempted to write about non-political topics seem to disappear into random computer folders and notebooks, alongside nearly illegible class notes, a random assortment of scatterbrained ideas, jotted down as if in Jack’s notebooks from “Fight Club.”

Personally, I’d love to be able to justify writing about music in all my columns.

But I feel conflicted, in part because I tend to gravitate toward opinion pages to read the musings of others on political issues and in part because I don’t think anyone would know or care what I was talking about.

In spite of the fact that nearly all college students now have iPods, and iPhones and smart phones with constant 3G access to a universe of information, if I venture to talk to anyone about music and don’t use the words Journey or Dave, I have to accept that I might as well be speaking in a vacuum.

If it’s not Lost or on network TV, I might as well just ramble to myself to save time and blank stares.

I’ve always been particularly passionate person about my interests, whether it’s music, politics or otherwise. That is part of what initially sparked my interest in comedian and social critic Bill Hicks, the shared passion for music and great disdain for the shallowness of American culture. As he says of musicians in perhaps my favorite quote of his: “I don’t care if they died in puddles of their own vomit; I want someone who plays from his fucking heart.”

And that’s also why it’s generally easier to write about politics. At least in politics, as with Statler and Waldorf, nearly everyone has some shallow, uninformed opinion I can tease out.

Because apparently music is nothing more than background noise to be played while doing Jägerbombs for most college students.

Even the “indie” kids’ musical interest generally centers on musicians with annoying vocal affectations who write not from their heart but from a thesaurus.

Perhaps this is some syndrome caused by watching too many Wes Anderson films, where even the kids who could be passionate about music and culture have been brainwashed into assuming that we should be stoic and deadpan in our mannerisms.

In a culture where even NPR covers Ke$ha as though she has anything of value to contribute to society and Lady Gaga (essentially Madonna 2.0) dominates the charts and award shows, it’s not surprising that it has become easier to elicit knee-jerk reactions to politics than to find other people who get the same rush of adrenaline and movement from hearing truly amazing music that I do.

But it doesn’t matter, because I will not go quietly into the night, marching to the beat of these mediocre hacks and passionless, soulless twits who will try to convince you of the merits of John Mayer or the latest “artist” of the week.

Even if it means I’m the only one left, I will not be suckered into this life of shallow materialism and bad music.
 

E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu