Questions
I’ve watched two similar questions slowly come to light in my mind: how does one (particularly me) come to like new music, and how did family names come into being?
They are similar questions because they both deal with overcoming incredible inertia, although of course of different kinds. In the case of the music, the inertia is the fact that people tend to listen to one type of music, and to like the songs they already know, and to switch the radio channel when anything they don’t already know comes on– at least, that is what I’ve noticed about myself. And yet, I still end up liking new music, and several times my preferred class of music has changed. Although, I had to force the latter type of change: from country (that was what my parents listened to when I was a kid), to alternative rock (because that was what the other middle-schoolers listened to), to contemporary christian (because I felt it would make a better Christian; and it did, for a while), to a final abortive attempt to like classical music. Mostly, when I begin to like individual new songs, I only notice liking those that I instantly like: like Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” or any of John Mayers’ songs. It seems like the rest just seep around the cracks, inveigling themselves into my consciousness to the point where they become familiar and then even liked.
As for the family names, I’ve always wondered about those: where did they originally come from, and even though I understand that they can be legally created or destroyed now, how often does that process happen? Like most black people in the Western Hemisphere know where their last names come from: the family names of the ‘owners’ of their enslaved ancestors. But where did white people get their names? The ones that don’t have obvious etymologies, like Baker or Smith. Where did names like Jahn, or Schultz, or any other millions of surnames that I can’t think of off-hand come from?
Possibly relevant posts:
- Amusing covers (2/2/2008)
- Pharell? (6/28/2008)
- linux friendly online music services? (4/16/2007)