Am I Missing Something?

Am I Missing Something?

Missing a few minutes of music isn’t exactly like walking into a movie theater late—in fact, I can think of a lot of compositions that I can skip large swaths of and still feel satisfied.

Written By

Randy Nordschow

Well, Netflix screwed me over again. Nothing so big as to ignite a class action lawsuit, like others have mounted in the past. No. But I am, however, mildly irritated. You see, I’m on the 3-DVDs-at-a-time plan, and the mailman just delivered discs 2 and 3 of the third season of Weeds this morning. The problem is, I was never sent the first disc, and now I’m going to have to wait until next week for the first installment to be delivered. And I’m not sure I can bring myself to watch the episodes out of sequence since the show has a definite accumulative narrative arc. Imagine Nancy suddenly dealing a new strain dubbed “milfweed” without knowing that it was Snoop Dog came up with name—it’s just not as funny in passing, you have to see the actual episode to fully appreciate the humor of it all.

A lot of music works this way too. You probably won’t be as “clued in” if you miss, say, the first five minutes of a Messiaen piece, even though you’ll probably reap a good amount of sonic rewards by the piece’s end, and maybe get dealt a few aha-moments as well. At the same time, missing a few minutes of music isn’t exactly like walking into a movie theater late—in fact, I can think of a lot of compositions that I can skip large swaths of and still feel satisfied. Regardless, I’m thinking of watching season three out of order, in part just to confirm that I’m not being too sensitive when it comes to linear narrative. But mostly, I don’t think I can stop myself from popping those DVDs into the player until next week. Cue music: Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky…