Re: Re:Re: crappy music of the masses

["Kris Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "a k butler" <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>
>>.  In any event, without fail, after I make such remarks about other 
>forms 
>>of music that I don't particularly enjoy, I always end up feeling as if 
>>I've betrayed myself as an artist and failed to heed one of the 
>>fundamental principles that makes art what it is, viz., utterly free and 
>>unrestrained emotional expression.
>
> Well you listened to it, and responded.
> Aren't you allowed your "utterly free and unrestrained emotional 
> expression"?
> :-)
> andy

Yes indeed. Joking aside, however, this generates an intersting situation. 
Freedom of expression means freedom of expression. So, if an artist 
performs 
a piece of music as a form of their expression, and it revolts me, then I 
am 
free to express that I am revolted by it. All is permitted in the area of 
emotional expression. However, as I stated in some other email, saying "X 
makes me feel bad" is quite different than saying "X is bad" (where this 
statement is a quasi-objective statement about something other than our 
own 
state of minds or feelings) or going about about sensoring X because it 
doesn't appeal to us.

And of course, I don't expect everyone to subscribe to my personal 
philosophy of aesthetics, which states that there is no such thing as an 
objective aesthetic or evaluative statement. I think they are meaningless 
and nonesensical, until translated as statements that denote personal 
feeling or expression. "X is bad" must be translated as "X makes me feel 
bad" in this system, which one cannot dispute. It is a privately validated 
statement of instrospection.

K-