The Inexplicably Unrelated & Unfinished Case of ...

Walks in. Grabs box with both hands, pulls it out of darkness. Inspects content of box. Inside there is one BLOG. Draws pen from coat pocket. Writes upon the BLOG with a pseudo-sophisticated scrawl.


Hey, Blogger blog. I... don't mean to... Ah... how do I put this? Well, I'm leaving you for now; I hope that's okay? No, no, I'm not quitting blogging... I'm just... leaving you. I'll be here instead, at a little place you might know called Tumblr. It's just... I've been unnecessarily posting the same stuff in two places for a while now... and although I understand you and Tumblr have some fundamental differences, I've chosen Tumblr. I mean, don't take it personally or anything. It's just... Ah.

Defeated, drops pen into box alongside BLOG. With a slight heave, pushes box back into darkness.
Exits.

Depth vs. Simplicity

The other week, an argument broke out in my English class as regards the quality of modern music. It wasn’t so much an argument at first — our teacher hesitantly, for fear of sounding old, opined about the decreasing quality of music nowadays. To his surprise, nearly everybody agreed. However, I’d been thinking about music recently and I had to beg to differ.

The main objection (to modern music) of the class was of its lack of depth and mere surface-level significance. “Music nowadays doesn’t mean anything,” could be something one of them said. I offered the following: Who are we to say what a song means to somebody? Perhaps to some of us Justin Bieber seems like a manufactured, talentless hack, but who are we to say that’s the truth? A thirteen-year-old girl may listen to him and derive from his music the most meaningful and significant sensations; maybe a choice she may have made, an important decision that slowly forms her character, may have been altered by a lyric that she heard and decided to interpret in her own way. My point is, the significance and/or importance of something (especially music) is never intrinsic to that something — it is always projected onto it by the beholder. 

It was argued that depth and intricacy to a song is what makes it good, and that a lack of that almost ruins our modern society because (without it) we are no longer being encouraged to think. This counterpoint was presented to me by the oldest guy in the class, who is a lot more articulate than me and a much quicker spontaneous thinker, and I naturally caved. “You have a point,” is what I probably responded. “Very true.”

However, that got me to think. Is this justification, this romanticism of thought and depth warranted? It occurred to me as I sat on the bus, reading a novel, on my way to college half-an-hour late. When I wasn’t thinking about being late, I felt this curious freedom: in being late, but not worrying about it; in just sitting on that bus, and letting it take me to college, regardless of what the time was. It was so liberating. But once I added depth to my thoughts, it all changed. I began to wonder, “What’s my excuse going to be?”, “Will they let me in?”, “Why must lessons be so goddamn early!” … As I further pondered my late situation, as I added depth to the matter, it became detrimental to my well-being, to how I felt.

On the one hand was the simplicity of enjoying being late at surface level. Not over-thinking the consequences and enjoying simply how things are (i.e. a nice bus journey, a good book, the interesting morning bustle of the city, simply arriving at college a bit late). While, on the other hand was the supposedly superior depth and thought. Predicting how my teacher will react, formulating some response based on my prediction of his reaction, cursing the very situation itself. It goes to show, as a matter of fact, sometimes depth is superfluous. On occasion, depth is a detriment. And I don’t think music escapes that occasion. Music (or poetry, for that matter) doesn’t necessarily always need to be deep and layered with an infinite variety of possible-meaning. Sometimes a song or a poem that clearly conveys its point, with blissful simplicity, is far more superior than the one that is convoluted in its pretentious depth.

And in case I’ve fallen victim to the pretentiousness of depth in this post, I’ll explain clearly here what I’m trying to say: the music or the poetry is like life in general. There are so many things we ruin with our love for depth and our disdain for simplicity (being a “simple” person is an insult, for example), but I propose we embrace The Simple: maybe you don’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/bestfriend yet simply because you haven’t met them yet — not because there’s something wrong with you. Maybe that thing what’s-her-name said wasn’t layered with complications; maybe she just meant what she said. Even if she didn’t, why not simply ask her what she meant? Maybe we just die and it feels, simply, like how it felt before we were alive; maybe there is no superclub that holds the after-party in an unspecified area where you need to have impressed the Highly Judgemental Bouncer to get in. Maybe this is the only life we’ve got and we should enjoy it.

Thinking too much can really get to you, sometimes. Take meeting a new person: instead of prematurely assuming they’ll be judging you harshly, why not imagine them simply as another person who won’t mind talking to you. (You may be wrong. They might be a psycho-depressed lunatic who hates the human race and seeks for our general demise, but how the hell were you supposed to know? And if you have to think that in-depth about everything, how can you ever be sure of anybody or anything? Why not scurry into a hole, curl up, and let your thoughts fester in your skull for the rest of your life if you’re going to be that deep.) 

I don’t know, man. I just think there are times in which we should just read our books and enjoy the city instead of worrying about being late all the time.