Oddly enough, I know people who love watching the Reality shows and making fun of the people who appear on them. So I guess the networks have tapped into a basic human source of pleasure, which is feeling superior to other people. Can’t blame them: they’re a for-profit business.

The Cat Who Walked Through Walls was one of the most frustrating of Heinlein’s novels. For me, at least.

For Christmas I received the book “The Cat That Walks Through Walls” by Heinlein. I ended up buying the James Morrow book “The Last Witchunter” for my mom, and “The God Delusion” by Dawkins for my dad. Really I want my mom to read the God Delusion but I didn’t want to seem to pushy, and I know she will read it anyway since I gave it to my dad. I look forward to reading all three books. Has anybody here read “Slaugherhouse Five” by Vonnegut? The internet buzz on it seems good, but I would like more input before I read it.

I don’t see the point in slagging people who do make money through music or baseball or whatever: they’re really in a different field of endeavor than us parking lot pickers and weekend warriors. McDonald’s must be the greatest restaurant in the world if you judge by the number of meals they have served, but no one confuses their product with that produced by a local restaurant.

I do wonder why so many people seem to prefer to watch other people do stuff, rather than doing it themselves. It is a choice, although it may be made out of laziness or gnorance of the alternatives. St. Louis, MO, for instance, has a very lively amateur musical scene and there are all kinds of opportunities to get involved even at a beginning level. To take another example, my office partner plays in some kind of amateur sports more or less year-round, not because he’s the greatest athlete but because he enjoys it.

Interestingly enough there are places where this tendancy is overcome on a wide scale. For instance, at the Burning Man festival lots of people do some form of art or other self-expression (and nobody is paid for it). The result is often much more interesting then professional work, and everyone can participate if they choose to.

I’m from a musical family - my sister is a professional classical musician and I am classically trained in theory and multiple instruments as well. I have perfect pictch, so I can tell when someone is off pitch the same way that most people could tell if the red light in a stop light was pink. I have also worked in the music industry for a dozen years. The vast majority of the musicians I work with are not massively popular in pop music, but some of them are recognised as being at the top of the game in their small sections and there’s an assortment of Grammy winners and multi-platinum sellers in them.

In the grand scheme of things, I’m nowhere near the top of anything in the “expert” world, but I know and in some cases have worked with the best.

Because of this, my friends tend to think that I look down on them musically and don’t want to hear their amateur efforts, which is far from the truth. Just because I enjoy gourmet food doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a good basic hamburger as well. Do I love hearing the best? Of course. But I’m involved with music because I love music, not because I love perfection. I’ve loved it when significant others have sung to me, regardless of talent level. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother singing me to sleep. Her talent level didn’t matter, it was the love she was expressing through music that counted.

I judge people’s ability relative to the level that they should be at. A band may be great for a talent night performance but a poor choice as the opening act at an arena performance. There’s no shame in not being the best at something. You don’t criticize your 8 year old nephew playing Little League baseball because he can’t keep up with a professional player. It’s true that your talent level will affect how many people will chose to spend time watching or listening to you, but that’s just the way it is.

But I will never tell something they shouldn’t sing, and if you want to sing, there’s always a willing audience of one.

Next, I blame us. We’ve allowed them to get away with it. Until last November, that is. We need to reconnect with each other and cultivate communities where we support the arts, science and increased public participation. I see this site as that and the exchanges here a positive thing.

As for stories, music and dance, I have my kids and spouse (who has “found” her musical voice after years of believing she couldn’t sing)! We’ll work on the rest of the world, soon.

“Everybody should do some music. Every creature and every material has the music inside, it’s its energy; music is actually very easy, there’s nothing to it, and everybody should search for his own.”
- Erkan Oğur

“Music is music. Bach or the fat guy playing ‘oh Susanna’ on his armpit at the block party every July fourth, it’s all the same basic language.”
- Pat Costello