Musical hauntings

I woke up with Clair de la Lune stuck in my head the other day. For those of you who don't know this piece, here's a link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nvLSWyVqsI

This is just one of the many pieces of (sometimes utterly random) music that I call my sad music. Along with some Beatles. And other golden oldies that my Dad sometimes listens to.

There is something about certain sounds, or themes, in these pieces that makes me incredibly sad. It's really stupid, but they just do. Not a want-to-cry kind of sad, but an empty, hollow kind of hopeless sad, and suddenly I really know that one day everything will be gone and all the people I love will be dead. I can't explain it, but it's happened all my life. Music boxes are bad. I had several as a child, and I told my mother that if she let my sister continue playing them I'd run away. She probably just thought I was being mean, but I wasn't. I just didn't want to hear the music. Certain adverts on the radio had this kind of music when I was small, and if I happened to hear it, no matter how happy I had been before, it had a devastating effect on my mood until I could "wash it out" with other music, and hope that it wouldn't come back to haunt me in my dreams.

It's not when the piece is in a certain key- I like tons of music in both major and minor keys. The only distinguishing feature of my sad music is that the pieces are often almost lullabye-like, or have an air of "innocence" about them. I hear strains of music in my sleep, often not even a piece I know, and I wake up with a shock. I wonder if anybody else feels this way about some music, or if it's just a quirk of my brain...

Thank God I'm Pretty

Now that I've got your attention with that vain title, (unless you're an Emilie Autumn fan, in which case you'll get the irony)...

I was reading an article on my new favourite time-wasting website, Mookychick, about the essential uselessness of beauty in society. The author compared it to canoeing; it's great to have if you're doing it professionally, but it doesn't serve any purpose other than self-gratification and if you're lucky, a bit of amusement for others. I agree with this, to an extent. I feel that beauty is becoming more and more unobtainable (or at least the degree of it which is expected is becoming higher), and people are frankly taking it way too seriously and wasting too much time agonising over it to be entirely healthy. HOWEVER... Aesthetics is an evolutionary trait, developed so that we could tell the difference between healthy and sick animals, rotten and ripe fruit, which caveman/woman had the best genes. It's so intrinsic to our value-judging system that we've created art, which is exclusively about aesthetics. So having a sense of aesthetics is not the same as being shallow and vapid.

Personally I probably spend more time worrying about my personal aesthetics than a lot of people, but that is in part because of ballet's very heavy emphasis on one's look, so in a way, I am one of those people who are fortunate enough to be able to tell critics that I'm "professionally aesthetic" and therefore have an excuse to look after myself and spend time and money on it. But I do feel that the reaction towards a concern for one's looks can be as judgemental and extreme as the obsession with looking good. Firstly, being healthy should really be everyone's end goal. That's what attractiveness was based on, once upon a time. It wasn't how many colourful twigs and leaves our ancestors put in their hair, or the cut of their loincloth, it was the physical sign of strength and good genes that got you laid. Now aesthetics have changed (drastically), but some of those instincts remain to this day. So while it's lovely and wonderful that people are being encouraged to love each other for their beautiful brains and not their faces or figures, this is no excuse for not eating right and exercising to stay fit. I've seen things on social media sites saying stuff to the effect of "instead of going to the gym (ie being vain), read a book (ie be intellectual)", and while I totally, unequivocally feel that intelligence should be nurtured like crazy, it doesn't mean that you should stop looking after yourself.

Another issue that annoys me, is some feminists getting all up in arms about women doing things such as pole dancing, burlesque, belly dancing etc. Apparently they do not feel that this is the proper way to "empower" yourself as a woman. Excuse me, but how the fuck would you know what makes me feel empowered? And what is wrong with wanting to feel feminine and beautiful and, yes, sexually attractive? As long as you honestly do it for yourself, you are doing nothing wrong, and you most certainly do not have anything to be ashamed of. It is a very different matter when the intention behind it is to be sexually attractive for the sake of someone else, or to gain love or more attention. But you can be a feminist and still be okay with the fact that you are female, which I think a lot of feminists lose sight of.

Essentially, girls need to play nicer, and be more fair toward themselves and each other. Stop judging the girl with no fashion sense or desire to be beautiful. But also, stop judging the one who likes making herself pretty, for her own enjoyment. She's not hurting anyone.

Atheism

So I'm finally getting around to this (stupidly) delicate subject. I have put a lot of thought into the whole issue, having previously been of the opinion that religion is relatively harmless and that it's the people who kill people, not religion. I have since changed my mind, and am now approaching Greta-Christina-levels of pissed-off-ness. One thing that I feel is very unfair in arguments about atheism vs religion, is that atheists are expected to know the bible inside out and upside down before making any kind of argument against it, whereas religious people are not expected to know jack about science, but they don't seem to see that as a problem. Atheists are the ones reaching out, researching and discussing why things within religion are nonsensical, whereas the faithful just sit back on their haunches and don't even try to argue up to the level of science.

Now I'll admit freely that I have never read the bible, nor do I plan to. So I am incapable of being able to pinpoint all the logical fallacies within religion, but you know what? That shouldn't matter! Because the point is that all of religion is a logical fallacy. I'm really not interested in their book, because it does not change the fact that they believe wholeheartedly in something THAT HAS NEVER BEEN PROVEN TO EXIST! The fact of the matter is that we have provable, verifiable facts in science, and they do not have the same for religion. All they have is books, written by people thousands of years ago, which as you can imagine was not a time of great enlightenment and thorough research. I mean, you look at medicine, and how that has changed so vastly in just the last 100 years, because our thinking and understanding of everything is evolving. But here are people still thinking in terms of 2000-plus years ago and refusing to let go of tradition.

I'm waiting for proof. Actual, empirical evidence of the existence of a god. Until then, you don't got nothin'.