This is a new one for me. I have apparently replaced my creative projects with a collection project, specifically collecting music and music related accessories. I am having trouble tracing the impetus for this undertaking, though I was thinking about it yesterday.

Music for the Soul

It’s kind of impossible to properly “wax poetic” about music and our relationship to it because the subject is far too nebulous and far too diverse to hit a universal truth. My brother in law claims to have “never been into music”, meaning when he was younger he didn’t have records or cassettes or CDs unless someone inadvertently gave him one, although he does have favorite artists and music styles which kind of belies his claims. For me and when I was younger, music was that kind of release valve in ways that I think we can all relate to. When I was angry, I’d listen to angry music; when I was sad, I’d listen to sad music; when I was happy…you get the picture. It didn’t always work in reverse, though, much to the disappointment of the PMRC. Aggressive music didn’t make me feel any more aggressive than I did at the time, although when I used to do a lot of writing as a Youth, I’d pick music to listen to which matched the kinds of stories and scenes I’d be working on, so there’s at least some personal correlation between the types of music I’d listen to and how it could give me ideas.

Music mattered to me when I was younger. I grew up as part of the generation that recorded songs off the radio because I didn’t have an income at the time to just go out and buy tapes or CDs on a whim, and radio one of the few ways for a kid to hear new music. My friends and I didn’t really talk about music, nor did we trade music the way some people do and we often only knew what the others were into when we happened to be at their house or in their cars. I suppose that means my choice of music was personal, and didn’t come recommended from the outside. In order for me to like a song, album, or artist, it had to speak to me on some spiritual level.

Music for the Gaps

Now what do I do? Like a lot of people my age, I listen to The Music of My Youth. There was a period of about 10 years when I couldn’t, though, unless I had those songs on CD or cassette (and cassettes were well on their way out by the year 2000), which means that there was a time when I’d heard a song for the last time, but didn’t realize it. That is, until I got satellite radio and rediscovered all of my old favorites like they were new again.

The problem with this was that I was in danger of putting those old songs into a new context. I’d listen to the “80’s on 8” channel during my 45 minute commute in the early 2000’s, and we’d put it on during cookouts or other events we’d host because our friends enjoyed it as well. During this time I was responsible for managing my daughter to and from daycare during the week, so she grew up with the songs of the 80’s almost as much as I did, and that put a pause on my listening habits as I realized that those songs were re-writing the memories I had originally associated with them.

Now I’m listening mostly to Lithium, the “alternative and grunge” station which surfaces memories of my time at college. I might be approaching the same saturation point with these songs as I did with those from the 80’s, though, which might be part of the reason I’ve decided to take this trip into uncharted musical territory.

Music for the Void

Reliving the past through music is great and all, assuming I don’t overwrite memories by making new ones and associating them with older songs, but how many times can I listen to the same songs, really? This puts me in a very difficult position of trying to find new music for the 21st century, when I’m old enough to be sliding down the far side of the life expectancy bell-curve. I know that not everyone my age is really into the idea of finding new music, but then again not everyone my age is against finding new music.

Part of the problem is discovery. For my part, I have relied on the dreaded algorithm of Spotify and, to a lesser extent, YouTube. To their credit, both have surfaced new and new-to-me music, but to my detriment the maths used to recommend things to me is based on what I have played through them in the past. I’m not getting a lot of “I didn’t know that existed”, but am buried under “that sounds a lot like _______”. In truth, there are a lot of places to discover new music. I am in touch with more people now than I have ever been in my previous years, yet I haven’t tapped anyone for recommendations. There are probably an uncountable number of sites out there which provide insight into new and new-to-me music, and I’ve started to branch out into those, like Bandcamp. But there’s another issue.

I don’t really know what role music plays in my life right now. When I was younger, music was a companion in practically every waking moment, but now I either don’t need that kind of sidekick or can’t find a companion that fits my bill at this stage of my life. In truth, some of the reasons I leaned on music have been taken over by my wife, my daughter, my friends, this blog (hello!), and everyone I can speak with on the Internet, so I don’t use music that same way now as I used to back then. This leaves me with a square peg and no hole of any shape to fit it into. I now listen to music for background noise, and it’s comforting when it is, but can become annoying when it’s not; I used to listen to music when I worked but I can’t do that any more because it becomes distracting, and I wonder if that was the last bastion of reason I could muster for why I was listening to music at all.

Music for the Future

There was a time when I knew nothing of application development, of video production, or of 3D modeling and honestly I couldn’t have possibly cared less. Then, at different times, something happened that made me care…and care hard. None of it was emotional as far as I can remember, and there was no trigger to fill some missing need I never knew I had. I just…got interested, and I’m wondering if my sudden interest in collecting music and music related accessories is the start of a new obsession in a similar vein. I could have chosen any other subject matter to get into, really, but I chose this for some reason. I’m hoping that this means that music is going to mean something to me again, although I’m finding it difficult to find a way to verify that.

I took a spin through Bandcamp this morning, listening to the songs they have on their “cassettes” homepage (since I have chosen cassettes as my totem, this is where I have been going to first). A lot of these bands are not even coming close to doing it for me, though. Some I really seem to like, at least based on the sample song provided. Others warrant a more in-depth investigation, but I’m not sure I can do that through Bandcamp, and I don’t want to scurry back to the comfortable outlet of streaming services to find out — call it “cold turkey therapy”, I suppose. There are a whole lot of artists I’m hearing that I never want to hear from again — I cannot abide for the absolute bullshit that passes for “metal” these days, holy fuck. What I’m finding is that the songs that are written by artists are for people who aren’t me. I don’t have relationship issues. I don’t have anger issues. Some of these song subjects are comical now, or are simply beyond me to the point where I can’t really care about the emotional payload they bring. That’s making it hard to not just find new music, but also to accept music which I like, sonically, but cringe from when I hear the lyrics.

I’m thinking that my best bet is to slowly trawl through these samples, follow the artists I might want to hear more from, and investigate them one by one, but that makes me realize that I might be treating this like a commodity, or that I might be pushing the cart a bit to hard. Am I trying to build a stable of new music in the first 48 hours of deciding to travel this road? Nothing in this vein is organic any longer; I can’t listen to “the radio” for recommendations because it’s all shit to me, so I feel that the only way to find what speaks to me now is to line it all up and inspect it en masse, which might be defeating the purpose of finding music that can mean something to me again.