Soul Music

I made the grave error of listening to "A Lover's Prayer" by Otis Redding directly following "Dark End Of The Street" by Percy Sledge. These two tracks in succession were almost too much to bear; particularly the latter (the subtle narrative of two adulterers stealing love echoing primordial pain in some mysterious, forsaken place in my self.) I wonder if Plato would have banned Soul Music in his ideal Republic? Whether I believe he has the responsibility to, or whether I think that making something illegal is a way in which difficult states of being can be banished are not in question, as this is clearly a different topic for a different day. That soul music is fatalistic and profoundly painful can hardly be called into question. Even when it banally expresses the false ecstasies of dance, party and earthly love it remains deeply upsetting. Perhaps it's more so, since false ecstasy is more degenerate than true pain; true pain being transcendental. Nothing false can transcend this life and this earth, it dies with our false body.