What Is Musical Then?

To me musical transcends definition, explaining what musical is like defining humanity itself. The boundaries are so broad it’s hard to pin it down with words. My idea of musical differs a lot from the official definition. To give you an insight into what my idea of musical is, I again bring you the XKCD comic:

Here the driver wasn’t concentrating on the speed at all. He was enjoying the act of driving before he was stopped by the cop to check the speed (anybody who posted in audiophile forums and to be told you are doing it wrong should appreciate the parallels here).

Notice we have no idea what the units are, it’s just a number. When we see the word “fast", the cop and a car - we automatically hold preconceptions that the driver is speeding (i.e. it’s 130 km/h or 130 mph). This is a valid assumption but we do not have a proper context (i.e. any information you can think of that isn’t contained in that 3 panels is actually information based on your previous experiences).

It is plausible (under different conditions) that when the cop say “Fast", he actually meant how slow he is driving. Not convinced? How about the power of suggestion (be it from me or from the author):

1. Is the person wearing a hat really a police officer? 
2. I implied a radar gun. But is it really? For all we know the guy in the hat made up the word 130.

This comic can be interpreted in so many ways. When we are not given all the information, our brains are capable of filling in the blanks and voids from our past experiences. My idea of musical is the ability to see the multiple scenarios and find the humour. To me musical is about self - one man’s music is another man’s noise. And thus music brings different things to different people. This is because we: 

• have different life experience
• have different expectations
• have different state of mind
• are not the same

This may by why the difficult idea of audiophile accuracy don’t sit well with me. This ‘ideal’ state of a flat 20 to 20 to me is conformity.  My Ubuntu distro is called Snakeoil, you already know I don’t conform to accepted social norms!

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