These days I read a lot about Tao and Zen and I came across a very fine
Chinese poem which says (obviously provocatingly):

   Every way the world goes,
   every way the wind blows
   is alright with me.

I read this and saw my increasing CD collection with music of all epochs,
tonal, atonal, calm, furious, deep and shallow and thought: What a
privilege to have all these different kinds of music at hand!  What depths
of expression!  What fantastic privilege to be a guest in so many "houses":
to be invited by Mozart, Wagner, Strauss, Palestrina, Schubert, Xenakis,
Machaut, Dvorak, Schoenberg, Adams, by all these different people with
their different ways of writing music, of communicating.  And I thought:
how strange to condemn any kind of music, to call some music a "plague"!
For me every music is a necessary expression of an individual way of seeing
the world.  How strange to say that a composer had a chance to compose
differently when he wants to express hinmself through his music.  Maybe I
dislike the way some bird sings - but this one bird has to sing his (or
her!) song in exactly this way - it can't help me.  And to see is offered
the wonderful chance to find the beauty of this individual way of singing.
(Besides, no matter what I do, if I call this singing a plague: I won't
change the way this bird sings.) What a pity for the people who condemn
certain kinds of music: they rob themselves of the possibility to learn
something, to see the world from a different, new perspective.  They are
given a wonderful invitation and they say No. Hard to understand.

What would the Taoist say to all this? Probably he would prefer to just
sit, listen and smile.  (Or, being a Zen priest, hit me with a stick for
babbling too much!) Or the Taoist would just write a little poem:

   Every song of every bird,
   every music of every composer
   is alright with me.

Robert