Mornings... and music

Some mornings you get up and the sun is so faint...
I had some tea, you know, I always do. But when I sit in the shadowy sunlight I feel like I can be the world.

ANYWAYS this is all an introduction to "Harper: a Musical History"

My youngest experiences with music were with enya http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae68NB-mOe4 and video game music. This left me with the impression that I liked classical music, but in fact I didn't. But enya and video game music both use the orchestral style, which is the cause of the confusion.
At this time I also listened to Aqua and Chumbawamba. These weren't nearly as influential for me though.
Anyways, this all sort of continued until in Grade 8 I really started to connect into the popular music scene. The musician who I like the most was Esthero. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=tl8l3S6cXos She had a great voice and sung about strange and surreal things to a very harsh backing of "trip hop" music. The reason why I eventually took her off the pedestal was because she just wasn't much of a thinker... and she swore a lot in her interviews. I found it hard to respect the music of someone who couldn't explain why it was so meaningful. In retrospect, this is a little harsh, but that's the way I thought back then.
The next person to hold the pedestal was Bjork. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=CYP9lA-g1_I Unlike Esthero, she had a lot to say, and she spoke in ways that really made you think. Not only that, but she tickled my sense of strange - she said and did such weird things. Eventually, however, it came to feel like they were meaningless. Odd for the sake of odd. They didn't have any underlying ideas or principles that I could relate too.
The most recent idol to hold the pedestal was then Kate Bush. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=_BZsXVf6INc She thinks about things - a lot. Most of her songs can even be dissected in the manner of a novel. She also satisfied the weird quotient. Her music videos often involved interpretive dance, and had premises like dancing through hell. She had depth, she had weird, and she had art. And she is currently uncontested for the spot of Harper's musical idol.
But I also listened to a lot of other things at the time. In video game music, I've progressed along Yasunori Mitsuda, http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=laMvJf9UNdc Nobuo Uematsu, http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=08RYp-uDpPo Hiroki Kikuta, http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ESRBmkK_Gwk and Akira Yamaoka. http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=xTkVMYAsdf0 But There's a story to it.
In my childhood VG music was practically the only music I listened to, because I was constantly exposed to it. But once I got involved in the popular music scene around grade 8, I let it slip from my music listening. But sometime around, oh, I dunno... grade ten, I happened upon a website devoted to it. I was flooded with the music of my childhood, and music by new composers or other music by composers I already knew. It was more than nostalgia - It was a reawakening.
Anyways, during all this time, I myself composed music. I started off at a young age, on a computer music program. I fiddled and fiddled mostly, and gradually built a knowledge of musical composition. When I rediscovered video game music, I actually made my own video game soundtrack. It was pretty good. I kept working at it. Lately though, I haven't... why? I have learned to play the guitar. Starting at the beginning of grade twelve, I was taught by my friend. That lasted about six months, and since then I have just been teaching myself. It has really changed the way I think about music, and it's far more satisfying to play a song instead of just hearing it played back by the computer.

So... this has been pretty exhaustive. I hope it's not one of those things that nobody but me cares about. I'll write nicer things later, I promise.