21 June

Why do humans love music possibly above all else? It’s not for all the reasons they often give. It’s because music is imitation in its purest form. And imitation is the root of not just all human life, but of existence itself. Unlike painting or dance or building things or language, music doesn’t resemble anything else. It resembles itself - a note, a rhythm, a melody are imitations, stripped of anything else so that what remains is *pure* imitative equivalence. Birds show us this. They don’t create buildings, or roads, or any of the infrastructure we associate with living. They live *inside* their songs. Refrains. Their songs create territories. Humans are exactly the same, all existence is the production and reproduction (imitation) of patterns. Music is the window into our deepest existence. Pure imitation. Challenge a person’s favourite music and they feel violated. That music defines their universe itself, the master underlying repetitive imitation that creates that universe. That patterns their life in all its details. Feel the insistent demands of an ‘ear worm’. How it occupies you, demands your full attention. It’s a literal invasion of your territory, of your soul. And as all imitation produces rivalry, music then generates our most intense rivalries. Because it’s the battle of competing imitative patterns. We live inside the ‘counter-cultural’ revolution, where teenagers took over the world, with their music as their great imitative organising force. Just ask birds. Bird songs are battle cries.