AbsurdBeats

Listen to the music is dead; long live Listen to the music.

Okay, so I had this idea to listen to all of my alt-blues-jazz-pop-punk (i.e., whatever wasn’t classical) cds from A to Z. I hadn’t really been listening to enough music, and thought this project would get me back to garden.

It worked, for a bit. And then it didn’t. And then it kinda did, and then it really didn’t.

If I wasn’t in the mood to listen to the next cd in rotation, I didn’t listen to anything at all. I’d occasionally pop in a rogue disc, but mostly, my player went unplayed.

For awhile I thought I’d lost my music mojo: All that had moved me no longer did. I mean, that was kinda the point of starting the project, to reconnect to something which had for all of my life mattered to me.

But it wasn’t true. Music did still move me. I’d occasionally listen to my Mp3 player on the train and BAM, I was right back in it. Or I’d hear a stray song and maybe bounce around, maybe mouth the words, maybe sit as still as still can be.

In other words, I have no earthly idea why I stopped listening to the music in the first place, and whatever my previous sense of Needing-to-see-this-through, well, sometimes persistence is its own obstacle.

I am trying to listen to more of my own music. It’s a connection for me—tho’ to what, I couldn’t tell you—and helps to quiet my distractions.

Maybe I’ll get more writing done; maybe I won’t get anything more done than I would, otherwise. Regardless, I’ll  bounce around, maybe mouth the words, maybe sit as still as still can be.

~~~

Some of what I’ve listened to recently: Hem, Jayhawks, Rickie Lee Jones, Katell Keineg.

I’ll never get married, but if I get married, I’ll dance to this at my wedding:

And this one, well, I like the undertone of menace: