Listen to Music With a Point

When Pete Sampras is losing, I scream at my television. I underline every other sentence I read even in books that are "just for fun." I hug my friends frequently and fiercely. And I cannot listen to a song I know without belting along with the singer. I have oft been the victim of the cruel question, "Who sings this song?" only to give the artist's name and receive the response, "Let's keep it that way."

I am not passive, and I don't ever want to be. Nothing truly real or really true is ever flat, especially with regard to art. And music is, indisputably, an art. The tunes we love shouldn't be an unnoticed backdrop to whatever we decide to engage ourselves with noticing. I far prefer songs with meanings to which I can relate, so that when I sing along I am uttering words and thoughts and feelings which have a point relevant to my life. Points--not only in math--lead to lines and planes which define dimensions. And in the abstract reality which makes life artistic and worthwhile, it is a complex dimensionality which contextualizes.

I've often been accused of having narrow-minded (narrow-mouthed?) taste in music, because I immerse myself in the folk songs of females who are stereotypically angry, depressed and gay. But as a woman, or a girl, or something unidentifiably in between, I find myself, my point, in the cadences of feminism. And the points in all of the songs I love stand together at attention to form lines, and these lines come together eventually to produce my dimensions.

The MIT Program in Women's Studies last month co-sponsored a Dar Williams concert as part of its 15th anniversary celebration. Like any female folkie, Williams strums with her hands and sings with her voice, but shouts with her heart. The result is an avalanche of feeling and experience and pointfulness whose depth reflects perfectly the spirit of MIT's program, women's studies programs in general, and every woman's particular search for a point.

Women like Williams have taught me that feminism has little to do with anger and nothing to do with hate. The cause does not concern placing blame on men as a gender, it concerns a female's reconciliation to herself, her self-identification and her self-love. It concerns my right to choose what I want to look like, what I want to be when I grow up, and how I get to then from now and from before.

As a little girl, a sexless kid, I never considered that my gender would factor into my life except in clothing decisions and prom dates. I see now how every decision I make is affected by my being a woman, how it affects my place at this school, on this planet, and in my mind. Williams sings a song entitled "When I Was a Boy," which focuses on the jolting change from androgynous youth to adolescent and adult society, where gender determines rules for behavior and lifestyle.

Williams explained that each of her songs "tunnels through the experience of being a woman." The poetry resonates in me: "I am the brainchild, I am the mortar, with a plastic trophy and an eating disorder and a vision as big as a great big wall, and they tell me that I'll move forward for the good of us all." This illustrates the dilemma women face, as we are expected to be the mortar which holds society and family together, but also encouraged to move forward, though unable to see past the aesthetic images which also colonize our minds.

And while any fan of "lesbian music" knows how hard it is to be a woman, it doesn't seem as though enough others understand. Most non-feminists argue that its paradoxical for feminists to preach equality and diversity while celebrating women's studies and women's rights. After all, there are no men's studies or men's rights movements that have made a splash in the same way. My only response is that that's a shame. No female singer I have encountered, from Janis Ian to Joni Mitchell to Ani DiFranco, has ever said that being a man is any easier, just that it's different. Dar Williams made a point of thanking the males in her audience for their additions to the female cause; its not easy giving up power, she said.

Feminism pertains only to the tranquillity of the female mind; it is just one type of self-identification. And music is just one medium which affords every individual an easy access to his or her point. Instead of seeing feminist music as exclusive and combative, those who can't relate should find a cause of their own and a medium of their own in which they might see themselves reflected.

Amy Neda Vegari '02 is a literature concentrator in Adams House.