Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Wow, I Just Realized Something REALLY STUPID!

I just realized something really stupid. Wow. I can't believe how stupid this is, and more than that I can't believe it took me...I only realized this, just now! It took me that long to realize it! How stupid is that?

Here's what it is, basically: let's say you go out and buy a great album from the record store, with like, between 5 and 10 really great songs on it that you love instantly, and the rest of them, well, okay - maybe they'll grow on you. Well brace yourself, because HERE'S the stupid part! For much less than the same cost, you could just write those songs yourself!

I mean, not those same specific songs. That would be either plagiarism, or a violation of causality, depending on when you did it. But you never heard those songs prior to hearing them, right? And you'd never have heard the other ones you'd write prior to writing them either. So from a closed-box standpoint, the reasoning works.

More than that, supposing the songs ended up being roughly-equivalent in quality from an objective perspective. Well, you would end up getting MORE ENJOYMENT out of your own songs than these other ones! First, because of the feeling of personal satisfaction and achievement, but second and perhaps more importantly, because you'd be biased. So why go buy some other person's album, when for so much less money you can write your own? I mean, writing a song is not like hard tedious labor. I knocked out two songs yesterday and had a blast - both RULE.

DIY, man. DIYDS.

I can't believe how stupid that is! And how long it took me to go, "Hey...!" on it. I guess it must be one of those things where sometimes, what's too obvious goes unstated out loud, for fear of insulting one's own intelligence. Especially if you're basically saying it out loud to yourself - bad enough to talk to yourself, that whole stigma. You really don't need to compound it by telling yourself something really obvious.

Anyway, I'm still going to go buy some of those other peoples' albums too. I'm just trying to find ways to stretch my entertainment dollar. And yours!

No comments: