The power of music

Music is powerful. Done right, it can be incredibly emotive - though I find it incredibly difficult to believe that anyone can be moved by Bach, but that's probably an argument that I shouldn't start right here. But certainly, music has the power to conjure up really powerful emotions. I was thinking about the songs and pieces that I felt had the biggest effect on me, and something struck me - they are almost all sad. It's not the only feeling that music can instill in me, but it's certainly the easiest.

If you don't believe me, go and have a listen to A Boy and His Frog by Tom Smith. The fact that it's a Jim Henson memorial song probably gives it an unfair advantage, but even still, it's a damned good one. It was also referenced on Something Positive a while back, which was how I originally came across it.

But I'm struggling to think of (m)any songs or pieces that make me feel joyful, happy or energized. Maybe Beethoven's 9th, though that seems a bit too obvious (if you're confused, that's the "Ode to Joy"). Perhaps sorrow is just the easiest emotion to tap, but I do think this somewhat unfortunate.

Taking the hint

I was in Oxford town centre yesterday and noticed that a shop that has been mostly empty since Tchibo stopped having retail stores in the UK has now been filled. Unfortunately, it's been filled with one of those discount bookstores - you know the type; full of crap books and terrible stationery that no one wants. The Works is a nearly perfect example of this, save one small detail: The Works has found a way to be profitable. Not two doors down is another example of this type of shop that has gone out of business. At the same location prior to that shop being established was a near-identical one, which really didn't last very long at all. In fact, Oxford (and it seems, pretty much every town I know of) seems to have been littered with instances of failed cheap bookshops. Now, I'm not very good at taking hints (I'm sure Ann will tell you that), but even I realise that there's probably a very good reason for this: it's a crap business idea. No one wants to buy the stuff these shops sell and even if someone loses their mind and does buy something, all the merchandise is so crap it has to be sold at such low prices that there's very little profit available. It's not like pound shops where you might feasibly find something interesting, or something that is good enough. The only saving grace about these shops is that they're so unprofitable, it usually doesn't take long for them to disappear.