This post makes me wanna cry...
For me, music is a form of communication that takes over where words either end or are ineffective. There is just too much beauty there to even fathom a world without music. And not that music has to be all about beauty all the time... There are just so many places music can take you, not all of them bright and happy, that human life would be empty without it. The complete story of humanity is in music.
Could it be your brain/ears are wired such that it's too easy to lose interest in mainstream music? If so, then you and I might have a lot in common. I'm a child of the 80s, so quirky synth-pop and heavy metal really get me going. I'm a vintage 80s synth enthusiast and just wish I had more money to spend on my toys. But more than that, I'm highly attracted to what used to be called avant-garde music. When I discovered the Beatles in jr. high, I enjoyed listening to all their cute early songs, but it was Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and the White Album that really fed me--heart, mind, and soul. I was bored with music theory in college until we got to 20th Century, and then I was WAY ahead of my classmates. And when I studied composition in grad school, I stayed as far back from mainstream music-making as I could, basically completely relearning the clarinet and heavily abusing the instrument to see what sounds I could wrench out of it. In the end, what I discovered was I was the one who was bending in new ways artistically, not all the cool tricks I learned how to do.
Now I'm spending a lot of time writing music for handbells, and my wife have become kinda like local stars in our church community because of what the two of us do with handbells. It's a wonderful creative outlet for me and allows me to be a little bit more myself than I get to be otherwise.
Since it's too difficult to get musicians together to perform the kind of music I REALLY want to do, I've resorted to making these kind of "sound sculptures" using my favorite electronic instrument: the Synclavier. And yeah, I'm just a little bit obsessive over it! When I was a little kid (back in the 80s) I was fascinated by the idea of space travel, astronomy, and that kind of thing. So now I'm combining two of my interests--space imaging (especially pics from the Hubble website) and atonal, arrhythmic, floating "space" music. What I've managed to do so far is a little too harsh even for my taste, but I think it's a good jumping-off point for more substantial work. I'm certainly getting more disciplined about it.
If it's possible you just can't get into too much commercialized music, check this out and tell me what you think--if you think it's horrible, then ok... But I'm very curious because I can't get into listening to commercial radio and I'm sick to death of classical music. About the only thing that interests me is music that has a message relevant to me and my life, like Contemporary Christian music, and more for the words than the music, and music that I create myself.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIn17Hq8I0E[/youtube]