I wrote:

>>no REAL music lover would even think of using REAL music as a mere
>>soporific.  Even the Goldberg Variations could keep me up all night.

To which Kevin Sutton's ('who allows sleeping and that
wearing of blue jeans to his concerts!') reply was:

>I think that we are leaning towards snobbery when we make statements like
>the above.  We whine that so few people support the arts and then we make
>them too exclusive for ordinary people to enjoy.

Well it seems the only thing that seems to have elicited this response
seems that I identified myself as a doctor, as well as having issued
'prescriptives' - that was a mistake.  After all doctors are not 'ordinary
people' too but authoritarian conservatives swine...right!  Let me try to
explicate myself.  I happen to find it symptomatic of a petit bourgeois
petty mindedness when people stereotype classical music as merely something
tame, inhibited, and, soporific.  Worse still is when it is actually
promoted as being soporific.  To me music just has to be something
intensely passionate, visionary, profound and totally inspiration.  If it
doesn't change your life, and move you the very depth of your being then
to me it's not music.  There are other ways of experiencing music for sure,
but I spoke only out of a passionate love of music.  Unfortunately great
passion is fertile ground for great misunderstanding.  So fine, wear your
jeans to concert - you can even wear your pyjamas if you like - where you
can sleep or make love all for all I care, just as long as you don't snore,
snort or anything else too disruptive to my enjoyment of the music.

And Mimi Ezust wrote:

>You do what you like with it, and I'll do what I like.  Real.  Hmph.
>Humbug.  Real music lovers ought to be able to do whatever they darned
>want to about their listening.

Oh please do!  And to think of it I do just about anything I please with
music as well.  Also I too have from time to time been sceptical of the
sleep specialists claim that you should avoid doing anything other than
sleeping in bed, and don't exactly follow their advice either....

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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