Dave Matthews Band

Today my friend SEB had a pre-release party for Dave's new cd which comes out in june. I attended, not being a DM's fan, but a SEB fan. While there, I came to talking with my friend Amber, about how we both are not listeners of Dave. She replied, "SEB told me she would have me obsessed by the end of summer." So I asked SEB about it. I asked how she knows that Amber doesn't listen to him, but she is so confident in the music of Dave Matthews, that she knows Amber will be obsessed. She said that it will happen.

I got to....brooding.....about this. And I am bothered by it. It doesn't have to be limited to music, but we will for the example. So often, people say, "this band is great!" "This artist is so talented!" anything that praises music as being 'good'. I am bothered because I dont' like dave matthews. I have tried. I don't understand, how this thing can be good, can be so believed to be good, and yet pass through my radar undetected. Like, hearing an empty joke and waiting to be entertained. Waiting for it to make me laugh, completely apart from my own volition, but leaving me staring vacantly. But that's an unfair illustration. And I am not vacant. I hear it. I just seem to not perceive it.

I don't believe I listen to 'bad' music. I appreciate and recognize good music. And yet...

Let's take it pass music. All forms of art. The most immediate that comes to mind is painting, sculptures, architecture. I know 'good' when I see it. I am confident in my 'sense'. I will get back to the use of that word later.

Dance is different. I have never appreciated it. Not without lying to myself. The most recent I remember was watching the A&M Chara girls perform with a friend who gasped, held her right hand to her arm, in a salute of her entire body to the beauty happening before her, and said "this is perfect. It's their best dance." My only reaction was to stare harder. I felt nothing towards it. They were moving, and that seemed to be all. Was that goodness lost on me?

I am waiting for reaction. For an uplifiting, airy, loss of breath not in my physical person, but in my inner self. I know what 'good' is because I have known it and reacted to it. This is why I do not doubt my abilities in perceiving it. I feel as if it can only be described as another sense, recognized only by the reaction from sensing. As if, not know you can hear, until the light notes of music are heard.

And this is where my dilemma is. I want to know, hear, see, feel the beauty and 'good.' In everything. Past art. In people. Possibly, that is one sense Jesus had above all of us that needs to be fine tuned within ourselves. Possibly, He never looked at what we call art as beautiful, but straight at people.