Category: music

The Need for Momentum When Consuming Certain Types of Media

If the title is confusing, I don’t blame you. I wasn’t sure what to call this post myself, and I’m not really sure how to start it…..So, I guess I’ll start by describing something I’ve recently observed–namely, that with certain media, if I don’t consume them regularly, they can be really difficult to get into. This applies specifically to mostly movies, TV shows, books, and writing–as in, taking the time to write something like this. However, suppose I watch a movie and then another movie right after that. If I see a movie soon after (say, the next day or two), the difficulty to sit watch the film isn’t so great. The same applies to books. If I read a book, and then another soon after, getting started and then finishing the book isn’t so difficult. Something applies to an individual book as well–namely, if I’m reading the book regularly and not really short spurts, then reading seems to flow. On the other hand, if my reading of the book is intermittent and each reading session is relatively short, reading can feel like a slog. It’s almost as if a type of momentum begins, making reading or watching a film easier. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what do you think is going on?

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Discussion About Setting Up My Music On a New Laptop and Questions About I-tunes

My chromebook was on its last legs, so I just got a new laptop. Moving and organizing my music on the new computer has been a top priority and a huge task. Currently, I have a subscription to Apple Music, and I’ve used i-tunes to play music–music files I ripped from CDs prior to subscribing to Apple Music. While Apple Music’s library is very large and meets most of my needs, Apple Music doesn’t have all the music/musicians I like, and I have some of those on CDs. Because of this, I still utilized my laptop (and an older ipod) to listen to this music.

Here are some questions that I have and would be interested in some feedback:

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Portland, Oregon 2025

Leaving the Portland airport, seeing the architecture of the homes and evergreen trees made me feel like I was back in Seattle. But as we drove into downtown Portland, two things stood out, distinguishing Portland from Seattle–namely, the Willamette River and the bridges, one after the other, a few rising high above it. Water features prominently in Seattle, but the water there is like an amoeba surrounding it, whereas in Portland, the Willamette is a strong line, cleaving the city in two, creating western and eastern sections. The Western side is more of the urban core, including the downtown area. The Eastern side is more suburban, with several portions of the longer streets and avenues filled with shops, restaurants and even movie theaters, creating a kind of charming main street vibe. I really like Seattle, but I might like Portland even more. The food scene seems just as good as Seattle, if not better, and they have probably the best bookstore I’ve been to. I want to talk about that store and also a used vinyl/cd/video store which I really liked as well.

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Thoughts on Taste

Reading Criterion.com’s Trash and Treasure at the Razies, I came across the following quote, which I liked:

People “distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make,” writes sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction: “between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar”—between art and trash. “Art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences.” We reveal ourselves through our preferences; like a space telescope photographing faraway light from the beginning of the universe, our esteem for a particular film is a lens that sees backward in time, to the economic class, educational history, and subcultural sensibility in which such preferences are forged. You are what you like—and, crucially, you aren’t what you don’t. To prefer this to that is to align yourself with these people instead of those, an assertion of in-group belonging through a common agreement about what tastes are unpalatable. Per Bourdieu, “all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance.”

As a reaction to the quote, I want to explore some of the following questions in this thread:

  • What is taste (art, etc.)?
  • What is good taste?
  • Is having good taste important?