The trope about music as emotional con job. Nostalgia manipulation for profit etc.
I was just thinking… only moments into Otis singing “I Got Dreams To Remember”… emotional carrots; so fucking what.
As much as I have been totally done with nostalgia for decades now, I don’t have a problem with a song or piece of music that was deliberatly created to generate attention through nostalgia or other emotional or even primitive devices. Because I don’t care about anyone’s motivations for making music. Nor do I pretend that I understand why someone wrote or performed a song or recorded a piece of music. In fact I think that “origin of process” information for a selection is not only in the main indeterminable but is also mostly irrelevant.
The piece comes on the radio, there is an old steam train doing it’s Sunday run, it blasts its horn just as I start to wind down the car window and a blast of cold air freshens my face. I decide to skip the song, hit seek on the radio and then turn it off.
Who cares?
That was my moment not fucking Otis Reddings nor the inventor of the steam train or automatic window winders.
But the music and car and train was part of it.
And who gives a fuck why.
Sure go ahead and try and analyse why someone wrote or made something. But realise you are doing that because you like doing that. Like reading every last detail of the liner notes. And what you understand or get from it will only be your interpretation. Specific to you. And it most likely not the thing. Because the thing is long past and was more than likely fleeting. And the songs are now just fleeting breezes that may or may not change the temperature. And any understanding of what the artist intended and their motivations is total guess work.
Nostalgia guesswork rather than discovering hidden meaning.
Nostalgia philosophy.