Personality types and prog

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 barbs wrote:

 Gaston wrote:

I blame the learned over any innate quality you may possess. I am
highly eccectric, but why does that have any bearing on whether you
listen to prog? Alot of eccentricity can be channeled into other areas
like painting and theatre. Why music? 

Well, for me, it was my parents who did it, inadvertantly, mind you.
They were very strict Christians and did NOT allow me to indulge in any
forms of rock music as a child. However, on the opposite side of this
they DID put me into piano lessons at an early age and had me listening
to all the greats, of course, and the charismatic music of
pentacostalism (highly energetic soulful gospel) as well as the great
hymns of the past couple hundred years. 

I was offered to skip a grade and change schools to the art school in
my city. I declined, siting a loss of friends, so really, I had one
foot in genius and one foot in mediocrity. I feel that I've retained
that certain balance for my entire life. I tried desparately to not be
the brown noser teachers pet. I remember purposefully answering
questions wrong so I wouldn't get perfect on tests. I did particularly
well in public school.

So what happened? As a teenager I rebelled. I snuck rock and roll
records into the house and listened to them without my parents
knowledge but this was the 90s, so it was Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins
and Pearl Jam. As far as my parents were concerned, it was devil music.
Something happened though, and I grew tired of these bands and almost
completely discarded them all (Pearl Jam I still like though) and I
graduated to prog around 1997. Perhaps it was the drugs, perhaps
something else, but when I first put on The Dark Side of the Moon,
something in my brain was tweaked, and it allowed me to go back to the
music of my earlier childhood - classical. And from there it was Yes,
Genesis, King Crimson, full speed ahead, you know? You know what it
felt like, man, it was like these were the bands I was SUPPOSED to have
been listening to as a teenager but didn't. They were like long lost,
yet future undiscovered friends.

To a degree, I believe I possess what appears to be some form of
musical clairvoyance. I don't know how to explain this except to tell
you that, you know how you listen to a record for the first time and
it's a great and wonderful experience, well it's like that with
me...except that I feel in my mind's eye that I've already heard it
before, like in a past life, or... in a dream or something. I know that
sounds strange, but before my folks really started to become awfully
strict, they themselves listened to prog in the 70s. Perhaps even while
I was in the womb - it becomes some sort of innate thing, ingrained in
the very fibres of your being, perhaps right in your dna, I don't know,
but it's something like that.

But like I say, that's just me, I don't know if other people are so
innately prone to prog and in fact, may like progressive rock more
because of their upbringing, NOT their disposistion.

So really, what happened with me was that, in effect it was my strict
parents who got me into prog simply because I had been required to play
piano and study the greats as a child! I had a foreknowledge of prog!
Thanks mom!!! (NOTE: This perhaps my explain why I feel I've heard prog
songs before, as certain melodies and riffs may have been lifted from
the greats, and so it's somewhat of a prog echo)

My parents feel slightly checkmated by this (I mean, come on, my dad
tells me that he felt so heavily convicted about listening to rock and
roll when he was a hippie cum born again Christian that it basically
killed him to see his son listening to it) so I don't really bring it
up, but I guess they are happy I'm not into alt-rock anymore (as am
I!!!)

My 2.

Gaston

Thanks for that Gaston. Even though
your story is unique, I think other people will be able to identify
with parts of your story and perhaps better understand others, even
themselves. 

I have had this theory for some time which is to do with the amount of
fluid in our bodies. There is this incredible relationship, IMO,
between the creation of the earth and our bodies whereby there is a
similar percentage of fluid on the earth as there is in our bodies. The
effect of waves on the surface of the earth is part of the continual
shaping and development of it. There are many associations between the
way we should treat our own bodies and the way we should treat the
earth as the body we live on.

Sound as you know, produces waves. I can imagine the developing child
in the womb, sensing the waves, tiny vibrations of sound around him/her
through the fluid the child is immersed in, penetrating through the
body and being registered in the developing consciousness of the child.
That feeling sometimes that certain sounds or a wall of sound goes
'straight through you' and the complex responses we have to it. It does
at times seem like a deja vu type of experience.

Anyway, it is something that I would have liked to have investigated much more thoroughly, scientifically.

Thx Barbs!  

BTW, I'm INFP, if you couldn't tell.  

Supposedly, my buddy says that all who take the test, INFP accout for only 5%.

Gaston