Perhaps I’ll Stay With the Mountains: Part II

Déjà vu is not inherently pleasant nor inherently repulsive, it simply reminds us that we’ve walked this way once before. That’s good, because—in this case—I would be leaning more towards the repulsive. It seems—or rather it feels—as if time has slipped backwards some four months, and collapsed into the waning autumn that was early November. With something less than fond recollection, my thoughts make course in that direction—though successful navigation is not always call for celebration. Truly though, I tell you, I think back to sitting at this very desk when I wrote this blog—the first time.

“I struggled greatly with this sixth and final blog entry,” I started. Whereas final may have proven untrue, the struggle is still very real. As a rule, I enjoy writing. But to write of music? It seems when tasked with such I’m suddenly rendered intellectually incompetent. Even now, I’m writing—not terribly, either—but not about the music. I skirt the peripheries of my subject with all the grace of a cougar that has trapped a beaver in its lodge: hosting the needed arsenal to dispatch my quarry, but none of the precision to extract it. And so I circle… 

When I last suggested that I was scarcely an authority of any music, Indian music perhaps least of all, that was clearly the product (and the product alone) of me not being privy to the existence of K-Pop. A relatively recent large-scale cultural export, it seems that Korean Pop Music or K-Pop has come to be a massive commercial success in North America. I must have missed that memo—maybe I was climbing.

After having spent half an hour or so browsing through the internet’s finest selection of synthesizers, Auto-Tune and a language I don’t understand, I can’t claim myself a convert. The only things that have changed in that time is the fact my Monster now sits half empty, and the gentle sweep of the clock’s minute hand has reversed its prior bearing. I do not see Psy displacing Mick Jagger in my iTunes library anytime soon, nor do I hold any contempt for those whose only knowledge of the latter revolves around Ke$ha’s preference in men. All loss is relative. So as this blog entry clings to life like a washed up actor’s career, I think I’ll do the merciful thing—the Liberals just voted in favour, too. I found a genre of which I was unaware, but—for my purposes—no lesser for that oversight. Having plucked its offerings and found no harbour for my interest, I set sail for calmer seas in more familiar waters. After weeks of midterms and papers, I leave on a hiking trip this Friday. That’s good: I need the break. For last time I pondered but now I state: K-Pop may do as it pleases, the mountains will do fine by me.