When was the last time you listened to music? Not as the background to some other activity, but as the activity itself?

When I am reading or studying I cannot listen to music with words; when I was studying for exams as a teenager and then in undergrad I listened almost exclusively to ragas created or performed by Ravi Shankar, because someone who won the scholarship I wanted then had said in passing that was what he listened to when he was studying.

When I used to DJ I would listen to hours and hours of different kinds of music, making notes on BPMs and ideas for transitions. I would listen to other DJs too. I still have the habit, on the rare ocassions I am somewhere with a live DJ, of wondering how and whether I would replicate or adapt certain of their decisions.

When we used to make mixtaps and mix CDs I would agonize over sequence and narrative and write my own liner notes.

Do you remember hidden tracks on CDs? Another reason to consider buying a CD player, if you too still have your old albums somewhere.

I return to music as the soundtrack to what feels like the breaking of the world.

Attribution

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

— from Humanity i love you by e e cummings