By Blaney Pridgen

All writers in Op Ed are here to inform and acknowledge issues of importance to our communities, however these writings represent the views and opinions of the authors and not necessarily of The Advertiser.

I love music indoors, out of doors, and in the car.  Music is good background for almost any activity.  It goes with everything like Texas Pete and Cavender’s All Purpose Greek Seasoning.  I resource music on Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, Sirius and CD’s.  Nothing is particularly strange about that, but I am peculiar in one way.  My taste in music is wide and eclectic. It’s all according to the mood I’m in, which I usually can’t identify right away.  I listen briefly to several styles, until I discover what feels and sounds good at the time.

When I’m feeling kind of religious, which some of us call spiritual, I can worship along with Gregorian chant or the Gaither’s or even Secret Garden.  Nostalgic notions send me back to 50’s and 60’s oldies but goodies.  Romantic twitches lean toward Sinatra, Bennett, and Streisand.  Every now and then, I require a fix from John Denver, Judy Collins, and even Joe Cocker.  Now this is neither strange nor peculiar.  When I am in the real world dealing with gritty problems and earthbound issues, I prefer classical and the older sorts of country music.  For almost everyone I know or have known, these two don’t mix or one does not like both.  I do.  Equally!  I can do Mozart and Merle in the same day.  Willie and Wagner work well, but perhaps on different days.  “He stopped loving her today” always reminds me of the third movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony.  I believe I like these two entirely different kinds of music the best because of their similarity in one way…they deal in hot mess matters and raw bone joy in abandon with no sugar coating.  

This suggests a broader topic than musical tastes.  Our lives are best served when we cultivate a taste for all sorts and conditions of our fellow human beings.  I’m not talking about mere tolerance or polite acceptance of others.  That’s easy and often phony.  What I am talking about is actually liking and even occasionally loving a wide variety of folks that don’t match up at all and may even hate each other.  And what I am saying is it’s a good thing to really like and maybe even lovepersons totally unlike oneself.  Actually, I don’t believe we learn anything from our fellows or give learning in return unless we at least like them on most levels and not just some. Tolerance and acceptance are better than nothing, but liking and loving is much better and a worthwhile pursuit.  Just like music, we might end up liking something new, that is, someone new and initially unlikely.  Or is it unlikeable? 

But to be honest, some music like someones go too far off of the likeable scale.  I can barely tolerate the Grammy Awards and the guest musicians on SNL.  And I used to sort of like the opera and Broadway musicals, but they went away.  Just saying, the same can be true for some people.