Who needs a reason?

I was asked why I like/love music (the question was asked in Spanish, so the difference between a simple affection and something more is a bit obscure). I didn't know how to respond and tentatively said "I don't know".

I realized that I never sat down and weighed the pros and cons of music. I've never thought that such and such are really awesome about music, and thats why I like it. It never occurred to me that I needed to rationalize my love for music music. I have had a completely irrational affection for music, and I never knew it. Startling.

The questioner said she was sad for me. I wondered why it was so bad to love something without needing to justify why you love it. Isn't irrational love the most true form of love? Personal gain is necessarily neglected because you don't care why something is good or bad. To be selfish you need to know what something can do for you.

In somewhat of a crude example, I explained to one of my friends, "If the perfect girl, the coolest chick you ever saw, walked by, you wouldn't need to rationalize why you would do anything for her." You wouldn't have a checklist of 40 yes or no questions that determined perfection. She just would be perfect.

And music is the same way? You hear it, instantly arrive at the conclusion of perfection and love it?

Inconsequently, you would later learn that she wasn't perfect, and in the true high school style would fall into a loving dismay of her where your knowledge of her every fault would be impeccable, which oddly comes out of a confused type of love of her in which you meditate on her every apparent weakness. But maybe that isn't so tangential. Is music perfect? Classical music clearly reveals that there is always a better playing possible. Listen to this crecendo (0:30 and after especially). I always want more here. No orchestra could have enough instruments in it or play loud enough to deliver a sufficiently huge wall of sound. And if they could play loud enough, they wouldn't be soft enough. It will never be perfect.

But how foolish does this sound in the context of logic? If man only has two natures, the senses and the intellect, and you disregard the intellect, you love something with only half of your ability. Music can be the most pleasing thing to your ears, eyes, ext. but that makes you no better than an animal. The intellect is what makes man better than the animal, right? But I have to think that my love for music is a bit higher love than a dog's love of food.

Maybe I will come upon a proper explanation of my (ir)rational love of music one day. I set out to find out why I love music, and was going to make a big list of why I do, but I can't. Everything is jumbled in my mind. Nothing is coherent in my mind, which is probably apparent in the disheveled form of this post. I'm like a half-witted Aquinas. I can come up with great contrasting arguments, but I'm not logical enough to deliver the whole package.


So that is a long way of saying, "Yes, I have no idea why I love music, and I am content in that." No se porque me gusta la musica, pero no me importa.