Zen and value judgments

 We talk about having an open, spacious mind and not clinging to opinions and judgments. Of course, I am very prone to making value judgments about works of music and literature. I am a literary critic, after all. One of our zen teachers is a translator who never wrote a scholarly book in his field, but I am a critic, and now a music critic too. 

So I do arrive at judgments, but these judgments are simply the starting point, not the arrival. Instead of saying, I don't like it (or I do) and stopping there, I use that value judgment as the starting point for curious reflection. What don't I like? Why? It could be the same for positive judgments. Being attached to a high valuation of a piece of music is equally problematic, although people often act as though only negative judgments are a problem. Logically, this is not so. Zen helps to cut through the traps of conceptual thinking. 

I discovered three more Spanish composers this morning, so there's that. One wrote songs not based on Lorca, but they seem like they are attributed to Lorca on the album somehow.  

Many songs are very minor in the sense that they are brief, often light in tone without much gravitas, and their value is often in their charm. Why should a very short song be of less value than a symphony, though?