Have you changed? (December 16, 2003)

I like music since I were young. In my early twenties, I was crazy about music and played as a guitarist a couple times with a local band in my hometown. I spent a few years practicing guitar and dreaming to become a famous guitarist in Burma until my parents insisted me to stop being crazy in guitar.
Anyway, I still like music and listen music. I hardly miss any Burmese music concert performed in San Francisco. But something is changing in my taste of music.

Until five years ago, I liked heavy metal or rock music a lot. I installed a pretty good car stereo system: MTX amplifier, POLK speakers, and MTX woofers in my very first old car, Mazda RX-7(‘91 model). I used to drive my car at night killing time on highway. I turned up volume very high feeling the bass punching out from the woofer. I loved that experience.

Now, there is no more car stereo system in my new car. The simple car cassette system originally equipped in the car is good enough for me. Even a little high volume is too noisy for me. So I turn down the volume till to the point I can still hear. No more rock or heavy music in my car.

Here is another thing. I like the songs on FM radio music channels too. First I listened 107.7, the bone, channel which plays rock songs. Then I switched to 96.5 Koit and 101.3, two popular channels with pop and soft rock songs. Now I am up to Jazz music channel, 103.7. Can you believe it? Jazz music! I never thought I would like jazz music one day. If you ask me now, I would say Jazz is very smooth and easy to listen. So, most of the time, my radio setting in my car is on 103.7.

When I was young, I paid attention to the lyrics of songs, and tried to understand what those songs meant. As you know, most Burmese songs are about “love”. If a song which tune is good and lyrics are beautiful, I listen it with my heart. All the love songs are very nice and in some ways related to me. That is what I felt before.

Everything is changed now. I just care the tune and not the lyrics anymore when I listen to a song. Those lyrics of love songs don’t make any sense to me at all. Is it called I am mature? Or my quality of being human is decreasing? Those experiences give me some thoughts and understanding. Your taste of music, motivation, value, priorities, and preferences change along with your age. We used to say there are three stages of life. I think people usually have conflicts with each stage of People. They misunderstand with each other.

I can now understand why my grandfather could not tolerate my rock songs, and why I could not listen to his old Chinese opera songs. I can now realize why my mother said “love is nothing” when I strongly opposed her idea and being in love with love songs. I can now comprehend why older people could stay home all the time while my feet were itching and wanted to go somewhere all the time.

The best way to solve problems between people in three stages of life is to listen to each other, to exchange information with each other, to discuss openly and most importantly to respect each other.