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It's come to my attention that I missed a day on this challenge. Day 20 SHOULD HAVE BEEN "A Song You Play When You're Angry." So that was two days ago.
And, right there is clearly why I somehow overlooked that topic. I mean... is that a thing? When you get angry you decide, "I want to listen to (Insert Artist and Title here)?" I have gone into the attic of my mind to think of any time when I was angry and specifically selected a song to play because of it. I don't want to say that I have never, ever done this, but I clearly have no conscious memory of doing it.
Really, my typical procedure when I get angry is to attempt to take a step back and analyze. Why am I angry? What caused it? Is it something I can do something about right now? Is it something I can do something about at a later time? Would doing something specific help the situation or my mood? If there is nothing I can do about the cause of the anger, is there something I can do to diminish it or move beyond it?
But that whole process, more or less, relies on a base of quiet contemplation, i.e. I'm not playing music during it.
So, even if I didn't overlook that day's challenge, I wouldn't have had any answer for it.
And that brings us back to today, where the original topic would have been "A Song You Want Played At Your Funeral."
Isn't THAT a happy thought?
I really don't have any care about what people listen to at my funeral. I'm not even sure I would have a funeral, or if I did who, if anyone, would attend. But the funeral isn't for me anyhow. It's for the people attending it. So, why would I dictate, from beyond the grave, what that event should be? I mean, I still haven't (really) thrown my own party (birthday or otherwise), ever. I'm not even sure I would know what to do in that circumstance, anyhow.
Let's just move beyond to the new topic.
When I had my old LJ Community, known as "Spaceagers," based on the book I wrote about the topic, The Isolation Generation, one of the chapter titles was "TVs and Latchkeys." I'm of the generation where kids often came home to an empty house because the parents were working. And if, like me, you had no siblings, you relied on television to keep you company until someone else got home. So, of course, I got to be a television trivia expert. And I would say that created a most unique relationship that no other generation has had with TV before or since.
Because of that, the boob tube carries an extra level of importance, just because it wasn't just a device to send information and entertainment. it was a pal, a confidant, an entity that you could relate to and with and meant that maybe we forgave the problems and celebrated the greatness more readily than those both younger and older ever could.
It only seems fair, after giving Day 22 over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that we give the Small Screen a bit equal time.
Television has changed over time, and so have the style of TV theme songs. From bright and bouncy themes to a song that basically tells the story of the program you're watching, to moody scores to songs that don't quite seem to fit the shows they belong to and everything in between. There have been a lot of theme songs that reflect well or badly on the programs they introduce.
My selection is a piece of music that actually wasn't written for a television program. It was written for a film, which was based on a tv show. But the concept of the show and of the elements it represented was some of the highest aspirations of what TV could do. Granted, teevee tends to lag behind culture when it comes to social change, and that's primarily because the sponsors try their best not to rile their potential customers. But this second version of the series in question already had a built in audience from both The Original Series and from the film series it spawned.
Exploring The Galaxy with a diverse crew of people, all working together because they were all representatives of the same organization was a message that we needed in the 1960s when the program premiered, and still resonated in the 1980s when the show returned, and straight through today, when a new online version continues the ground breaking elements that the name of that show represents, it's all of these things that both reflect on the elements that we admire about television and that maybe make us want to be better, too.
For Day 23 I select Jerry Goldsmith's Theme, with the adapted Alexander Courage Original Song incorporated - "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
And, right there is clearly why I somehow overlooked that topic. I mean... is that a thing? When you get angry you decide, "I want to listen to (Insert Artist and Title here)?" I have gone into the attic of my mind to think of any time when I was angry and specifically selected a song to play because of it. I don't want to say that I have never, ever done this, but I clearly have no conscious memory of doing it.
Really, my typical procedure when I get angry is to attempt to take a step back and analyze. Why am I angry? What caused it? Is it something I can do something about right now? Is it something I can do something about at a later time? Would doing something specific help the situation or my mood? If there is nothing I can do about the cause of the anger, is there something I can do to diminish it or move beyond it?
But that whole process, more or less, relies on a base of quiet contemplation, i.e. I'm not playing music during it.
So, even if I didn't overlook that day's challenge, I wouldn't have had any answer for it.
And that brings us back to today, where the original topic would have been "A Song You Want Played At Your Funeral."
Isn't THAT a happy thought?
I really don't have any care about what people listen to at my funeral. I'm not even sure I would have a funeral, or if I did who, if anyone, would attend. But the funeral isn't for me anyhow. It's for the people attending it. So, why would I dictate, from beyond the grave, what that event should be? I mean, I still haven't (really) thrown my own party (birthday or otherwise), ever. I'm not even sure I would know what to do in that circumstance, anyhow.
Let's just move beyond to the new topic.
When I had my old LJ Community, known as "Spaceagers," based on the book I wrote about the topic, The Isolation Generation, one of the chapter titles was "TVs and Latchkeys." I'm of the generation where kids often came home to an empty house because the parents were working. And if, like me, you had no siblings, you relied on television to keep you company until someone else got home. So, of course, I got to be a television trivia expert. And I would say that created a most unique relationship that no other generation has had with TV before or since.
Because of that, the boob tube carries an extra level of importance, just because it wasn't just a device to send information and entertainment. it was a pal, a confidant, an entity that you could relate to and with and meant that maybe we forgave the problems and celebrated the greatness more readily than those both younger and older ever could.
It only seems fair, after giving Day 22 over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that we give the Small Screen a bit equal time.
Television has changed over time, and so have the style of TV theme songs. From bright and bouncy themes to a song that basically tells the story of the program you're watching, to moody scores to songs that don't quite seem to fit the shows they belong to and everything in between. There have been a lot of theme songs that reflect well or badly on the programs they introduce.
My selection is a piece of music that actually wasn't written for a television program. It was written for a film, which was based on a tv show. But the concept of the show and of the elements it represented was some of the highest aspirations of what TV could do. Granted, teevee tends to lag behind culture when it comes to social change, and that's primarily because the sponsors try their best not to rile their potential customers. But this second version of the series in question already had a built in audience from both The Original Series and from the film series it spawned.
Exploring The Galaxy with a diverse crew of people, all working together because they were all representatives of the same organization was a message that we needed in the 1960s when the program premiered, and still resonated in the 1980s when the show returned, and straight through today, when a new online version continues the ground breaking elements that the name of that show represents, it's all of these things that both reflect on the elements that we admire about television and that maybe make us want to be better, too.
For Day 23 I select Jerry Goldsmith's Theme, with the adapted Alexander Courage Original Song incorporated - "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
