Music

One of the good things about WHO AM I WEDNESDAY entries is that I can be as chatty or as quiet as I want to be.  It's really all of the things that are flowing through my brain at any given moment in time, and I'm sure that I have said that my brain can be a rather scary place depending on the day.

Well, this week, my brain is actually in a fairly good state right now, so this entry will be a little on the short side, but it is also going to be a happy one, filled with a lot of passion.

And to think that it all began with a recent activity that I began doing on my Facebook account.

October 22, 2014

Okay, so I've been doing something in addition to writing these blogs each day.  And it's something that allows me to express a little bit of creativity inside of myself.

Or at the very least, it allows me to think creatively over what choices I plan on making for this event that I'm taking part in.

The story goes like this.  A couple of my friends who I interact with on Facebook began to do this feature where they would go through some of their favourite songs from a particular decade, and post random songs on their Facebook pages.  One song per day.  You had to provide a video of the song, chart positions that the song reached in at least one country, and where the song can be found. 

In the case of my friend, Dawn, she chose two decades.  She chose the 1980s and the 1990s.  For the 1980s, she posted one song from the 1980s on her wall for eighty days straight - hence the reason why it was called "80 Songs of the '80s".  And for the 1990s, she did the same thing, only she posted it for 90 straight days, hence the reason why it was called "90 Songs of the '90s".

I have to admit, it was really fun to see her list of songs.  Many of them I had already heard of, but there were a few that I had not.  Some of them I even added onto my iPod because I liked them so much.

And perhaps the one thing that I liked about the feature the most was that it encouraged positive discussion.  And take it from me, social media is certainly a juggernaut to get through some days trying to skip over negative posts to reach the positive ones.

So, I thought that I would try the same thing.

Mind you, I'm only on day #5 of my eighties and nineties countdowns, but so far the response has been quite good.  I enjoy posting the songs on my wall, and it makes me feel somewhat great knowing that there are people out there who have similar tastes in music as I do!

But I'm genuinely a huge fan of music in general.  Mind you, I can't sing well enough for Adam Levine or Blake Shelton to spin around in those chairs telling me that they want me to join their team.  Nor can I play any musical instruments well enough to sit in for a band the way that 19-year-old did for The Who back in the 1970s when Keith Moon was unable to play.

(Ah, see how I tied yesterday's Tuesday Timeline entry to today's Who Am I Wednesday post?  I didn't plan that, by the way.)

I always listened to music when I was doing homework.  I chose music as my arts elective in 9th grade.  I played in the elementary school concert band between grades six and eight.  And I think when I was a teenager, I watched more MuchMusic than I did any other television network.

Of course, since MuchMusic has basically turned into the Degrassi channel, I don't nearly watch it as much as I used to.

I can only speak for myself here, but I consider music to be a natural anti-depressant for me.  Well, provided that I don't listen to too many sad songs that is.  But whenever I hear music playing, it makes me very happy.  I can't imagine a world without music in it.  I refuse to believe that a world like that could exist.

So, whenever I hear of school boards using music and art programs as some sort of leverage in planning school budgets, it makes me very upset.  I don't think the bigwigs in school boards know just how important music and art are to a child's development.  To cut those programs from schools just stifles creative development and prevents kids from having their own voice.

I say keep the music playing by keeping music and art programs in schools.

But again...that could just be my own opinion.