The National and the Problem of Other Minds

Nick:
Have you heard The National? I investigated them in earnest on the tip of a trustworthy blog.
Oh my god. Who is the world?

Liz:
I just checked out their MySpace. Lookout Barenaked Ladies. barf.

Nick:
Here’s my beef with The National. Do our peers really think that's beautiful? Like they live the lives we do, and then in their private time they sit down and really feel that vision of the world? Because I do not feel it, and I do not understand how you can live in the same world I live in and get that from it. And that's how things work.

Liz:
Well if that's the only basis for your beef w/ The National, maybe they'll grow on you? I agree, but on the other hand, music tastes follow certain set trajectories, and the one you end up on as an adult is the product of a lot of meaningless contingencies of your adolescence, so maybe those people who like The National aren't all that different from us. But it also seems like the taste trajectory you happen to follow still has to color your present-day worldview, if aesthetics means anything, so maybe those people are profoundly different from us and do experience the world in a completely alien way. [puzzled shrug]

Nick:
You're right. It's funny that I used to look for, like, metaphysical answers to those questions. Like I thought there was something in the music itself, then I thought there was a spirit of music that was progressing, and so on. It's like my brain went through the entire history of western thought just because I didn't understand why my heart was moved by certain things. And now I’ve come to terms with radical contingency. So, thanks again, Fleetwood Mac.

Liz: I feel our conversations sometimes operate on a strange plane.

Nick: I also like how this started by me wanting a girlfriend and convincing myself of how special I was.