John – are you typing with your ass full? Don’t type with your ass full.

Both answers are right. I don’t think Jesus changed George Bush and I don’t think Molly Hatchet saved anybody’s soul.

Yes if the Wall meant something to UnS, then she can own that (I made my mom pull to the side of the road at the corner of W. Alabama and S. Shepherd so I could run in and buy the Another Brick in the Wall single, but I don’t think it ultimately changed me…maybe if I had bought the album).

But I do think that music can literally change you. My ears tell me so. Or rather my lack of hearing. Huh?

And that guy who lost his memory and can’t remember anything for more than five seconds but he still remembers how to play all the piano tunes he learned before he…I forgot what I was talking about so I hope you get what I’m after.

Really, music can literally change you. And on more subtle levels than what I just got through typing with a sandwich up my ass. I believe that. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go eat.

I’m not saying that it’s unreasonable to claim that music inspires you. It may prompt you to have thoughts or emotions, but those things are yours and didn’t come from the music. Music doesn’t have an inherent power to communicate anything. You could argue that lyrics can communicate an idea, but more often than not, lyrics are just words that sound good together and any meaning you derive from them is accidental. Still, it takes you to receive the message and you to act on that. The Columbine kids, for example, were not turned into killing automatons by listening to Marilyn Manson. That was all their own doing.

We are not the masters of every bit of change that happens in our lives.

We don’t always have the options that we want, but we do ultimately make that change ourselves. Nothing does it for us. This bit of the discussion is flirting with free will, which is a much larger discussion, so I’m just going to leave it there.

More importantly, I think that you, Justin, are being contrarian

Always a safe bet with me.

by claiming what you are claiming knowing full well that language can take poetic license when we are trying to convey meaning.

I get that maybe you don’t actually mean that music changed your life, but I’m not sure that everybody who uses that phrase is being so figurative. I think some are actually arguing that music did change their lives, which is ridiculous. Just substitute “Jesus” for “music” and see how it sounds then.

It must be lonely in your head if you are going to be so insistent about this.

I still don’t know what this means and I’m not just being deliberately obtuse. I don’t see a connection at all with loneliness and rejecting the idea that music could literally change a life.

Is there a reason this concept is so wrong to you? Is saying that music changed your life the same as saying this sandwich fucked me in the ass? Is it equally ridiculous to you and why?

Again, I’m not arguing against metaphor. I’m simply saying that people are giving music far more power than it really has.

Just to mix up quotations here:

But having it DID CHANGE ME, because without it, I KNOW FOR A FACT that I would be different.

You don’t know this for a fact. There are plenty of people who listen to The Wall and are completely unaffected, so there’s clearly nothing in the music itself. The power that you describe it as having is something that you give to it. There’s nothing built into it that has power over you. And because there’s nothing in the music that has power over you, I’d say it’s a safe bet that if you didn’t find The Wall, you would have found something else that was similarly inspirational. That comes from you, not the music. Own it.

Lay it on me.

You have been laid, mon frere.

Lay it on me.

I agree that claiming our lives forever changed by an album or a song to be a little over the top, but as an idea I think it works just fine.

I was first 6 I think, when I heard it, and it blew my mind. Until that moment, I had never been pulled aside by anyone and had music presented to me in a way that made me focus on the music itself, where it wasn’t just “background music”.

My uncle turned the lights off and said listen to this. He had a new stereo.

It was “Hey You”. Followed by children singing with empowerment in “We Don’t Need No Education”…

Years later, after moving to the States, my household had a handful of albums.. AND THANK GOD FOR THE WALL.

I listened to it alone over and over again between 8 and 14.

The Thin Ice was powerful.

The Trial and the Judge’s performance in that song spoke to me and still does.

Did I have free will to direct the course of my own life and was I really just inspired by this music instead of it CHANGING ME?

yes. But having it DID CHANGE ME, because without it, I KNOW FOR A FACT that I would be different.

I know its a dead point to go on about it at this point, and realize its just semantics and a whole lot of blah blah blah. But that is one example of how a small piece of music changed my life…

Is it lonely in your head, justin?

I have no idea what that means.

Somewhat on topic link there.

You cannot separate yourself from your experiences.

We’ve been down this road before, but to summarize: You change your life, the music doesn’t. If you decide to make your life different, it’s because you wanted to, based on whatever information and opportunities you have. I don’t understand why it makes sense to attribute that to music any more than your furniture.