Sinister Ball

“There’s a kind of experience I think every music fan has had. I call it the “bad ears”: It’s a kind of one-on-one Wyatting, and it’s what happens when the assumptions you make flip over and leave you the one vulnerable. It’s when you’re with a friend, and you play them some music you like and you want them to like too. They don’t say anything. And suddenly you’re hearing it with the bad ears: Every pretension, every flaw in the music becomes utterly obvious to you. The lines you thought were terrific are revealed as facile. The lines you thought were lovably dumb are chasms of embarrassment. The song ends. You want to vanish. And your friend smiles and says “Yeah, that was good,” and then it’s their turn.”

— From Tom Ewing’s Poptimist column. I love this concept of “bad ears”, which I’ve experienced more times that I can count. “Bad eyes” too, for movies. Everything we love, like it or not, is a kind of social bargaining chip, and it’s an amazing experience when you watch one of your chips suddenly lose or gain value.