A note to Mr Ray Bradbury

In Fahrenheit 451, I understand your issues with censorship of literary material and the majority of people in developed countries who are inward-looking and apathetic towards anything outside their comfort zone, this you illustrate with your 'speech' carried by what could be loosely considered as the main antagonist of the story, Captain Beatty.

I empathize with your cause and concern and issues and anger and worry because I see your points which have long before my re-appreciation of your book (the first time was in secondary school) been my views, as well, albeit in a different light.

My main gripe though, was that you had chosen to depict music loosely, in your novel, as a mere sensational tool to fill the mind. I would like to say that your issues could well apply to the world of music too.

These days, music suffers as much controversy as books too. You get people like Eminem and his controversial rap, or someone from a little backtracking in the form of Bob Dylan. The thing is, the bigger the controversy, the bigger the attention gathered to the music. It is probably the number one advertising tactic in the world of music, which is carried on and out through radio and tv and the one thing you probably could not have factored into Fahrenheit 451 in 1953: the Internet.

But these so-called controversial musicians who talk about war and drugs and unplanned pregnancies and everything that is making everyone "unhappy" are, actually churning out things that masses want to hear, right there just under love and heartbreaks and making up and making love. We want to hear about the bad things in other people's lives. It makes good stuff for gossip, good stuff for discussions, good stuff for people to feel good about themselves not being "unthoughtful".

But the thing is, music is not all about controversial lyrics or love songs, heartbreaks and sex. There's a whole lot of musical material out there that do not make it onto national radio. Perhaps a few will have heard of B.B King, but what of Peter Green? Paul Macartney is a famous icon, but who are Johnny Kidd and the Pirates? These days, who is John Scofield and what does he do, when the masses listen to Justin Timberlake?

The less breadth of music you are exposed to, the less refined you are. Music is one of the innate gifts and impulses in the human race; you see people tapping fingers, knocking beats on knuckles, whistling!

Yet we have to come to the painful realisation that music does not mean in today's developed world anymore than a marketing strategy, commercial deals and italian suits, tunes that the masses have been listening over and over again and again, styles that are stale as 1-month old minced cheese.

Not being able to read materials that remain outside our individual social zones is a form of self-containment; you could imagine an irregular but definite enclosure around each and every individual, you included, depending on how wide this person reads and assimilates the information to turn it into knowledge.

Which is the same with music. The less breadth you listen to, the less freedom you get, the same musical mindset you have, the suffocating pressure imposed on you by your own subconscious mindset. Which in turn carries the same social effect as described in your book, albeit this time it's not the sleep of reason that comes about, it's the sleep of creativity and individuality, which is intricately linked to Mankind's evolution and progress, which is linked to how much breadth a person can reason for oneself.

Fortunately, in an ironic way there is not much consequence in not having a good musical ear. We can all get on with life well, living in our mouse-labbed enclosures that we choose to ignore. After all, not everybody is courageous as to leave one's comfort zones for insecurity. It's much different for books and reading I guess, which teeters on a larger scale and potential to stifle the human mind. Even musical manuals and notation have to be, yeah, read.

I tend to think that people cannot choose what they want to see, hear, touch, breathe and taste, but they can choose what they want to read, listen to, feel, smell and eat. We've got people who listen to the Allman Brothers and Dire Straits, we've got people who choose read Thomas Hardy, D.H Lawrence and Angela Carter. These people though make up a vast minority, speckled all around the land. Perhaps this is probably why the truly ingenious and creative always belong to a minority.

In today's developed world, the same fast-paced rhythms of different industries creates this enclosure for us; we hardly have time for anything if we grind our butts off executive chairs, burn our soles off black tarmac, or steam our faces black in our daily work lives. When we do have time for ourselves, we have to decide who or what gets our priority. Some people say that we do not have anytime for our family anymore. Some say we do not have time for friends. Some say we do not have enough time for ourselves.

Where to find time for reading? I guess it doesn't have to be reading, or listening to music, or any other aesthetic activity to maintain the thinking mind. Like in your book, if a person has just that little bit more of time solely for more thought, and more time for one to socialise with others and talk about things they thought, sooner or later the right ideas will be formed and one will decide, because of this little bit of time to think, what one wants to do.

How much time then, are we willing to give ourselves?