1/20 - The Allegory of the Cave

Today was a pretty lazy day.

I didn't really pay attention in my government class. I half slept the whole time, but I was making sure that I wasn't missing anything I didn't know. But I already knew everything, so I went back to sleep.

We took some quizzes in Theory, which is the only time I really learn anything in class. So it was a good class.

I came home, took a nap, and studied for my Aural Skills final from last semester, which I took at 3. I messed up the speed writing pretty bad, but since I had a 99 in the class, it shouldn't have made an impact on my grade too much, especially since I did well on everything else.

I jammed with my friends Jesse and Jesse later in the day. We played for an hour an rocked pretty hard, but some R.A.'s came upstairs and told us we were being loud and they could hear us downstairs, so we got guilty and quit for the day. But it was a lot of fun.

Other than that, I fixed my debit card issues, bought some textbooks, and lounged around all day.

Yesterday, in my composition class, my teacher said something in class that I thought was pretty cool. He talks pretty fast, and he's a little eccentric, so it took me a little while to understand what he was saying. But it is a pretty cool idea.

The Allegory of the Cave:
Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to the shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners can get to viewing reality. He then explains how a philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

So, in my opinion, in order to free yourself from the cave, you must shed all of your judgments and what you believe is right and wrong in order to see life in order to see the true form of reality instead of your own distorted version.

My teacher told us to put this in musical terms. Free yourself from judgment of all genres of music, or musicians or styles or pieces of music, and you will find what is really great about every player, style and piece of music. If you can do that, you will enjoy a lot more of what the world has to offer musically.

It's funny to look back from my perspective right now at when I was a kid, and all I listened to was Rush and the Who and the Beatles. This doesn't mean that they're bad music now, they're just not all that I listen to, and I enjoy them just as much as I enjoy downtempo or classical primitivism or good ol' Balinese Gamelan.

I challenge you to let go of your musical inhibitions and explore what this big world has to offer. If somebody likes it, it has to be good somehow, for some purpose.

M