The point of today’s class was to drive home the enormity of the technological revolution that took place in the 19th century. Outside of reruns of Little House on the Prairie, it was good to realize how limited pre-industrial life was. Most people never left 30 miles outside the place they were born. That’s one thing to hear, another to understand. The same goes for diet. Well, obviously they were more limited than we are now. But thinking about it and realizing how much their diets depended on the weather, the seasons, and how monotonous and repetitious it was leaves one with a kind of hollow feeling. With mechanization, the world was more interconnected; people, and food, could travel. With physical travel came telephones and the transformation of communication. Suddenly time mattered; time zones were established because they were never needed previously. In under two generations, most people in the United States experienced a displacement of space and time around them.

A corollary to this point was the obsession with standardization. Clocks everywhere would be in perfect alignment. Life would be regimented, displaced after centuries of custom to fit in a newly industrial and punctual world. F.W. Taylor was mentioned, a fetish of turn of the century Progressives. By the late 1920s Taylorism had become unfashionable.

In class today we learned about compression and how modern music has alternated the loudness of music. We heard several examples of this, such as Katy Perry, Adele, and Rachel Platten, as compared with older singers like Arethra Franklin and Mahalia Jackson. When it was pointed out, I did realize that the volume of newer songs had little to no change. But I’d be lying if I said I felt outraged or deprived of “real music.” Franklin and Jackson did have quality to them, and I can’t deny they’re “better” singers than Perry and Platten (with range, power, etc). But they’re too different, too separate, for me to make a distinct call on “quality.” Katy Perry’s “Firework” is not 1930s gospel; different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes.

Something I did find interesting was in the article we were assigned to read, it mentioned that new pop music is more repetitive. It made me realize that I sing to modern pop a lot more than I do to songs before, say, the 1970s, even if I know the song and lyrics well. With pre-1970s songs I’m more likely to listen to them as background than attempt to sing along (I’m a terrible singer but I do enjoy it). Maybe that’s because the repetitive lyrics make it easier? Just a thought that crossed my mind.

A deeper note was struck with the discussion of idealism vs realism, which goes far beyond the realm of music. Professor O’Malley mentioned Plato’s perfect forms, and the idea that there was a perfect everything, and that anything else is a shadow of it. I think I’m more of an Aristotelian, but I’m forward with my dearth of Greek philosophy beneath the cursory. I can’t rightly put myself in one camp or another. As a political junkie, I’m forced to view the debate from that angle. I’m radical in my views; some have derided them as utopian. I don’t believe in a perfect world, just a better one. And I don’t believe it exists; just that it can. As a lapsed Catholic turned full atheist, I don’t recognize any kind of higher power; but the romanticism of the Church and the Christian outlook are alluring for other reasons. I don’t feel quite comfortable putting myself firmly in either camp. Although I’m sure I’m in one or the other. If you could be in both, wouldn’t everybody do it?

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