Assault on the eardrums

Warning: do not click on this link if you have ever disliked any of the music Pretty Lady has previously extolled. You are pretty much guaranteed to be Very Upset.

As she explained to dear Crom just now, Pretty Lady doesn't know just what, exactly, it is about music that effectively immerses the listener in the mindset of a raving lunatic, that so floats her boat. There is some deep truth to the old Glass Eye song, "The crooked places may be made straight, but the heart longs for the crooked place."

Perhaps it is Emotional Tourism; perhaps it is an overdeveloped capacity for empathy, perhaps it is a surfeit of adventurous past lifetimes. Pretty Lady's college roommate certainly found it disturbing when she was found, all too frequently, generating mosh pits whenever the Shoulders launched into their classic, 'Trashman Shoes,' a romantic little song about a besotted garbage collector who goes Too Far.

An art school friend of hers, however, actually introduced her to American Music Club's 'Engine' with the song, 'At my Mercy,' the pure poetry of the first two lines, "I touch your dress; your dress is blue. / I am a coin that fell into the sea" offset by the more directly sinister, "Now, stumbling around, I'm lost from view. /Do you know what became of me?"

Maybe it is a fliration with the mythos of the Beautiful Loser; maybe it is a harmless letting-off of steam. Perhaps it is a ritual acting out of the remembrance, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

At any rate, Pretty Lady certainly can't get Kantian about it.