Sticky Music

   If you examine your brain sometime, you will likely find that some tunes "stick" in there. Perhaps (and clearly, I am guessing here) there might be a sort of wave function in "sticky" music which is just not present in the "regular" variety? Take a listen to "Happy" by Pharrell Williams, this is seriously sticky stuff. At some level of mentation then, we infer that "liking" a set of sounds may not be entirely "voluntary"? How weird is that? Admit it, you have spoken this way, when you find a thing you find to be clever or catchy, what do you say to your friends? "You have just got to love this!". Or consider Gnarls Barkley's song "Crazy". You would (unfortunately) be technically nuts to not find it "catchy". In brief, it is terribly sticky stuff. Take a listen to "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba, if this stuff isn't in the class of song called "adhesive", what is? And it isn't just pop tunes, what about "Victory In Jesus"? If you don't like that song, you are at; or near, brain death...in my humble opinion.
  And yet, somehow; stickiness per se is not entirely predictable. We talk of "popular hits", and in my opinion, we are in that case, discussing this very thing, this feature I dub "sticky". But there are sticky sounds which have never (yet?) achieved a popular embrace. Witness "Tokins" by Steve Miller, or "Country Girl" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Here, we find adhesion sure enough, but the sticky part never "stuck"? Are there brain receptors out there at large which do not consistently fire? What is that? Perhaps it is but a matter of timing, or of personality, and the package it all comes in? Or what about luck, maybe there? Consider for a moment, is it possible to record the utterly stickiest sound ever...and still have nothing for it to stick to? Do we thereby generate an "anti-hit", a brain-bonded unit, which nobody enjoys? I ask this by way of inferring that we discuss something here "larger than mere" human tastes. For there exists in this realm, the "opposite", and here I am not eager to tread.
  When was the last time you heard "I Shot the Sheriff"? And whenever it was, I say it was way way too recently! There ought to be a law against that stinker. Or consider the sheer toxicity of "Love Potion Number 9". The thing is downright scary. It's even worse than "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" from the Wizard of Oz (if that is even possible!)! These songs, like radioactive waste, ought be hidden in deep, hardened chambers, far from sunlight... So, there exists a bad-sticky, an evil-adhesive in the real world. When one of these dark entities, like say "Kung Fu Fighting"; rears it's head, it is (very) wise to defend your brain, so to prevent a hostile takeover by these...these whatever they are! How could a a song be that be that bad, and yet be a popular "hit"? What if it is actually an "anti-hit"? It would be a bit like eating something truly revolting (like liver for instance!) just because (?) it is revolting? Some seriously degraded thinking we have here, at the very minimum, don't you agree?
  Do you see where this is leading us? "Taste" is not the key! It cannot be. Everybody around us is saying here, that "It's all a matter of taste". But how could "desire" which functions as an attractant, be simultaneously a repellant? Taste "pulls", it doesn't "push". Or to rephrase, beauty has an "allure". If said beauty begins to drive off and repel, to that very degree then, it ceases to be "beautiful" and becomes something else....so say I. Such stuff would yield; "The reason I am so attracted to you is that I cannot stand being in your presence?", what sort of reasonings are these? This feature then, of that which pushes, as what pulls, cannot (in my estimation) be primarily, or purely perhaps a "subjective" thing. No, rather; we were design built for it! Sticky music is "attaching to pre-built receptors", as we "recognize" it! We have an on-board "stickiness estimator", and so being able to (correctly!) identify "sticky". Tens of thousands of persons identify the thing (correctly), and you get a "hit". How far from "adhesive" is "beauty"? Beauty then, is not (primarily) in the eye of the beholder... Rather, beholding then, is itself (as an action); "helping us remember" what we considered to be "beautiful", prior to the looking? I mean, we are "consulting a standard". Where did said standard come from? We did not devise the thing, we refer to it, infer from it, and agree upon it; but did never devise it! This is shocking. This can only mean that you came into the world, pre-wired to admire and "be drawn to"..."something"? More realistically, to "Some One"...
  Perhaps all this might be a bit like an amnesiac, hearing his own Mom call him by name, and him feeling uncomfortably aware of "something familiar" in it all? "I ought to know that name, why does it sound in my ear as it does? That tone of voice, from that person (whoever she is), seems like something I ought know". How weird that this "cognition" goes by-in-large, both used and ignored in us. You say "X" is beautiful...how do you know? How (ever?) could you?
  So then the doorway into the real, called "beauty" is ordinarily closed to us, in that we are the very ones who discount it! I am "drawn" by it, and yet, I find myself repelling, and so, "it couldn't amount to anything much"... That door; as a kind of access point, is now closed to us. But the problem is that the door of truth is also swinging shut! In our time, and in our world, this pathway, this "highway of holiness", this "road of the real", truth I mean; has been (historically) the open route. What if it too closes? What if your "truth" and mine never agree, and also, we both continue to claim that our version is "true"? In that case, truth itself becomes it's "unself", in that it "forgets to be true"! Good becomes evil, and hope dies on that day.
  "Flirtin' With Disaster" by Molly Hatchet, cannot both be a great rock'n roll tune...and not one, at the same time. Either I am wrong, in saying that it is, or you are, in saying it ain't. Possibly, we are both in error, but it is impossible (it cannot be), that we are both right! So then, where truth and beauty meet has been hijacked (for political purposes), by beauty, which is itself a damned ugly thing for it to do! For a woman to begin a discourse with "I am as good as you", may or may not be true, but it certainly ain't attractive! To attempt to make truth (like beauty) a matter of "personal taste", is both un-true and butt-ugly.
  The little factoid that Flirtin' is very likely the greatest rock tune of recent history, and that it is there-by an attractant, not a repellant, says that we are being directed here by heart, and not head. Our brain demands content, our heart decrees a cry for "home". Inside the swamp of logic, debate, and a mere "bare" truth, there remains no hope. The entire discussion of the "modern" is to, as an "adult", embrace hopelessness. Put down the childish desires for a kingdom and a name, and light... And I, for one; say "bullshit"! Hope lives. It lives in us, in that; He-alive again lives, in fact; and in truth. Hope is something crashing into our world from "above and outside". We do not build it, but we "recall" it. It is not, and cannot be a matter of "tastes" as to whether He busted out of the tomb. If you don't like it, feel free to hallucinate as you please, but neither you, nor me, nor the devil of hell cannot get Him back in there! If you do not buy the Covenant, that is your delusion, let me know how that craziness works for ya, but neither you nor I, nor any congregation of the faithless, can ever "hope" un-do it! There is no true "anti-hit".
  And that is a beautiful thing! It doesn't matter if you like it, or not, there is zero you can do to halt it. Our only real "choice" is whether to join in the dance or get crushed by those who do. That age to come, that world of beauty, that golden era, that world where things make sense, the one we have all been waiting for; is come! It arrived, that "Kingdom"...(with her King), done showed up!
  There is no "going-back", where are you going to go "back" to? The reason that you believe what you believe, is that you believe it to be "true". It is base treason, and fantastic idiocy to imagine that it is you-too who deem the true to be "itself". No Sir! At the best, and under "ideal circumstances" (which in fact, never occur), you "recognize", you "remember" the true. "It rings true" something within you, in that the "standard" is met. Your heart says "yes", when the key opens the lock. Your mind is forced to admit that the key and lock "matching", cannot be "chance or taste". The sucker was built for it! Deal with it.
  From prior to when things were, you who was yet to be, were loved by Him Who Is. He knew you, calling unto a future and a life we cannot yet imagine, and when we see it, we will say "It is as I hoped!". Called "back" to the One, we never met, and yet despised, into a time which is to come, by a Voice we hope to hear! It is not as-if logic were a "bad thing". Rather, that she too awaits her Maker!
  He is on the way, and with these eyes of flesh, I shall behold my Maker. So said Job, so say I.