Innocence Lost is Knowledge Gained

Time for another post that leans nerdy more than it leans political.

In a previous post (http://nerdsandpoliticsandnerds.blogspot.com/2011/12/j-pop-america-fun-time-now.html) I mentioned my love for Japanese Rock and Pop music.  It spawned from simply listening to the opening and ending songs of shows airing on cartoon network and when I sought out full length versions of said songs, it all just kind of snowballed into looking more and more into the bands who gave their music to the anime I watch and enjoy.  From this I found my favorite, High and Mighty Color as well as Maximum the Hormone, Hyde, L'Arc en Ciel, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Access, Yui and Tommy Heavenly.  As American Rock began to interest me less and I began shifting to Japanese Rock/Pop I did some thinking about why my preferences were shifting, certainly it had a bit to do with my tendency towards following my own path, particularly if it is the path less traveled but there was still something there that spoke to me.  In fact, it took me years to quantify what it was about music with lyrics in a language I didn't understand that made me love it so much, certainly I'd had to explain it to others I met and I usually came up with reasons based around the more frequent techno/rock mixes and more prominent use of female vocals in rock music and while all that was true, it wasn't the real reason.  The real reason was that for the first time in my life I was truly listening to the voice solely as an instrument.  When you're listening to music in a language you understand, yes you can listen to the voice as an instrument, but ultimately the meaning of the words directs your mind away from fully absorbing the effects of the voice.  When you remove that aspect of the song, it enhances the voice as an instrument 10fold.  I suppose it also helps that the Japanese spoken language is very straightforward and uniform with the sounds involved.  English is awful for how many different pronunciations a letter can have and that can be changed by the letters around it or sound exactly the same as other letters.  Off the top of my head I can only think of one confusing sound in Japanese, at least for me, and that is "su" and "tsu."

Why do I bring all this up?  Well, recently I've been using Pimsleur's method for learning Japanese, the "listen and repeat" stuff.  It's used by the pentagon for training and if you have the time to devote to it, can teach a language extremely quickly.   The Japanese lessons I have are 3 levels with each level having 30 lessons which are each 30 minutes long.  Ideally you listen to one a day and 90 days later, you're pretty well versed in said language.  Now, I don't exactly have the time for that every day, plus I go for repeated listenings to make sure I have it down really well, so it is taking me significantly longer.  I have actually taken to listening to them in my car while I drive, give each lesson about a weeks worth of driving listening or so and then move on to the next lesson.  Obviously this will take me significantly longer, but at the same time it is being done during a time when I would normally be doing nothing but driving.  The problem is, I'm starting to pick up sentence structure and I'm starting to be able to figure out other words in sentences while I read the subtitles of whatever anime I am watching.  Part of me finds this awesome, that I have been able to alter my way of thinking to process Japanese, but another part of me, the part of me that fell in love with Japanese music is horrified by this.  I do not plan to stop learning Japanese.  It is something I have really wanted to do for some time now and I will not go back on that, but it is coming at a price.  I will never be able to lose myself in the voice as an instrument like I used to be able to do.  I suspect Japanese Rock and Pop will still keep my primary interest for taste in music because it really does appeal to me on that level better than other genres have, but in the end I'll slowly be cutting away at the ability to experience a song for a song like I used too.

Innocence lost is knowledge gained.