Mike Arsenault

At a young age, I had a music teacher tell me that music shouldn’t be listened to while you are doing something else. He said that you should sit somewhere and listen if it was a recording you were wanting to experience, and pay attention if you were lucky enough to see music live. I think with some music, this is probably the correct thing to do. If you have never sat through and really listened to Mahler’s 3rd Symphony, or exposed yourself to more modern works like A Night in Tunisia (the Miles Davis/Charlie Parker collab album) for example, there is nothing quite like devoting yourself and some of your time to fully listening to those works and letting them get inside your head.

Some music isn’t like that though. Music can play a huge role in the way we socialize. Folk music is meant to be enjoyed by a group, sometimes where everyone listening takes turns performing, for example. Modern rock and roll? Much better when shared. When you go to a rock concert, it isn’t just to hear the music, it’s so you can BE there, man. You are both recipient and collaborator, and that unique fusion makes for some of the best memories you’ll ever have. How many people forget the first concert they ever went to, rock band or no? Mine was the hair metal band Helix, who had another hair-metal band called Kick-Axe open for them. My friend Pat lit a guy’s heavily moussed hair on fire, I got slammed in what passed for the mosh pit in those days (1986), and I saw a long-lost flame in leopard print pants and a bandana. I remember the music, but it acted more like the glue that held the experience together rather than something I appreciate for it’s majestic artistry.

I am trying to narrow down the exact point in time when it became ok for music to be strictly in the periphery. Do we need to go back to the era of the portable stereo? Or is it that seminal piece of 80′s technology, the Walkman, that was responsible for this shift? When I look at my collection, I have a lot of music that is completely disposable. It’s even organized by the type of activity I will use that music for. “Workout List”, “Music While I Work”, “Music To Do Housework By”. There isn’t a single solitary activity that doesn’t have it’s own soundtrack.  In some ways, this is as horrible as businesses that use classical music to ward off youths from the premises at night. But the reality is, there is a whole class of music created today to fill this perceived need.

I am not going to get into the argument about which music is art and which isn’t, but the fact is people are very comfortable these days in using music, which I think is very much a cultural thing here in 2011. Oprah asked, “What song is the soundtrack for your life?” I’ve participated in numerous message board discussions about “What is your walk-out song?” (HINT: “Woooaaahh! Yeeeaaaahh!”) I don’t know a single person who doesn’t use music at the gym to help get through their workout. There wouldn’t be dance clubs without un tiss un tiss un tiss. It’s a weird class of music, as it crosses over with popular music and becomes something else in the end. Functional music, whose only purpose is to underscore some other activity.

I know for some people this is yet more proof that society is culturally bankrupt. That art is being drowned out in favour of the manufactured. In my world, there is room for the art and the crap. I still take time to just listen to music, but I also embrace the crap, as it gets me through the day. It props me up in the gym when I don’t feel like being there. It integrates into an activity that I would normally find boring or routine and elevates it into something more awesome. I don’t view the dance music and the drum and bass and the j-pop inspired too cute for school stuff as being a detriment to other music, I view the stuff on my iPod as facets of a greater whole where there is room for all kinds of sound and music.

What do you guys think? How do you use your music, if at all? Do you listen to the highest forms of art while you’re cleaning the bathroom? Do you listen to Rafi while you are performing open-heart surgery?  Pipe up, either here or on Facebook.

It’s been so long since the last time that I blogged that this is essentially a do-over. My name is Mike Arsenault, how do you do?

The last few years have been crazy. Lisa and I have both switched jobs since the last time I was regularly blogging. I am splitting my time between Red River College and Naida Communications and Lisa is in a new role at CanadaDrugs.com which is keeping her quite busy. Things have stabilized to the point where it makes sense for me to devote a small amount of time to writing again. I got so busy for awhile there that I had thrown all of my hobbies under the bus. All I pretty much did was work and spend time with family. With that came the inevitable weight gain and health degradation inherent in working crazy hours and doing jack squat for exercise.

So now it’s 2011 and I want to try and undo some of the damage I’ve done to myself, and to find a better balance in my life between all of these competing priorities. Here are the over-arching goals I want to pursue this year:

• to learn more
• to lose the weight I put on while pursuing my current jobs
• to spend more time on hobbies and fun stuff (including writing and gaming)
• to spend better time with my family and friends

To those ends, I made a plan to put everything into motion:

1. I resurrected my blog, and tied in all of the various social media hooks that I am involved with. I don’t do too much in the way of updating for things like Facebook and whatnot, but I find services like these very handy for keeping in touch. My goal for this blog will be to just talk about things going on in my life and to do the occasional angry review about whatever I am obsessing over at the moment. Nothing too heavy, just enough to stretch my writing muscles and hopefully have a little fun in the process.
2. I resurrected my XOSoftware domain. This will be where I write about nerdy tech things that my normal friends won’t care about, but it will also be my focal point for learning new things. I really like WordPress, so I will be teaching myself how to make WordPress Plugins. I will also be learning a bunch of stuff about SEO and Ruby on Rails this year, so what better way to chronicle the learnination than blogging as it happens? When I have working plugins to share, I will use XO as my distribution mechanism. And when I have to vent about Sharepoint, those rants will go on the XO site rather than here.
3. I resurrected one of the first domains I ever owned, HeinousBrains. This is the one I will use to foster my various nerdly hobbies. So talk about gaming, creating my own games and game worlds (4th Ed D&D I am looking at you) and exploring various other nerdy topics will all go there.
4. I re-joined the YMCA. Having access to a gym on the weekends and in the evenings when I have the time to do it makes sense, and it was the linchpin of my successful weight loss attempt in 2008.  I have access to a gym here on campus for free, but depending on my schedule I can’t always take advantage of it. My thought is that I should be taking advantage of it way more as it is so time-efficient, so the sub-goal here is to kick my own ass into using the facilities more.
5. I created a Tumblr blog to track my weight-loss efforts. A lot of people who go through this process will tell you that making your journey public is a great way to keep yourself accountable. My thought in using Tumblr is that a) it’s something new to learn and master and b) it keeps that part of my life organized and outside of this main site so that I can really focus on what I am doing weight-loss wise. Tumblr is super-easy to update (even more so than WordPress, sorry guys) and I thought this would help me actually update it every day.
6. I’ve pared down my list of friends and associates to a level where I feel I can maintain those relationships without over-extending myself. My family comes first, but for people outside of my family, I thought really hard about who I wanted to keep as friends. The goal now is to make regular time available for those friends. It won’t be huge amounts, but I think the people I’ve picked will get it, as they are busy people too.

I am feeling pretty confident about how this is all mapped out, and I am certainly open to ideas and changes as they come up or become necessary. More soon!