Music without words

So, yesterday Stacey and I went to a concert of music that was, for the most part, enjoyable. There were, however, a few pieces that I did not particularly enjoy. They all were music without words. I don’t know what it is. I just never really liked music without words. This is a problem, as much of classical music, and thus the key to cultural musical refinement, lies in music without words. I just never particularly liked music without words. Yesterday as I sat listening to the music without words, it made me think a lot about myself. I thought at first that my dislike for wordless music is a sign of my lack of creativity or imagination, something which may or may not be the case. However, I decided, in the end, that my musical preference is very much a symbol for who I am. Three recent examples are helpful. My wayward brother (who currently is a self proclaimed Indian chiefery major) is considering a psychology major. This seems completely unreasonable to me. It rings of utter uselessness, and I don’t know how anyone could enjoy being a psychology major. However, this last week, I have been writing a paper on auditor litigation for publication in a business ethics journal that focuses on different psychological phenomena that bias judges, juries, the investing public and auditors, all contributing to the problem of auditor litigation. I read many different purely psychological papers from the psychology literature, and enjoyed them a great deal. I got to thinking, it is not a dislike of psychology that makes the thought of that as a major for my brother so distasteful—in fact, I enjoying a great deal thinking about how people think. However, I find repulsive the contextless setting of studying psychology for psychology's sake. Applied to some situations like auditor litigation, I love it, in abstract, I do not particularly care for it. Similarly, I am getting a minor in economics, and I enjoy it a great deal. However, I enjoy it, in large part, because I can apply it to concrete examples I know about from my other classes. I am much more drawn to accounting and finance, with their concrete basis in actual facts, than to economics, with its grounding and termination in often unapplied theory. A true economist is just as happy discussing problems where craisins are traded for corn, whereas in finance and accounting we deal in cash. Lastly, last winter semester I took a calculus class, to brush up so I could do better in my economics classes. I love calculus, and especially love how utterly useful it is in solving so many of life’s problems. However, I hated the class, because whenever someone would question the usefulness of the material, the teacher would respond, “I am just here to teach calculus, not to show you what it is useful for. Ask whatever major is making you take this class for calculus’ uses.” That irritated me a lot. So, back to my dislike of music without words. To me, wordless music is just like economics, unapplied math and psychology, pleasant, but only when put in some useful context, such as words to listen to. I love theory and abstraction, but only inasmuch as I can readily apply them to some useful and concrete problem. Rather than swim freely in clear water, I would much rather plunge into pudding, swimming in substance instead of speculation.