Enjoying Music
Dear Reader,
Here's another oddity of an article from the Opinionated Meat Berry. It's an article I've wanted to write for a long time, but either never mustered up the strength to start/finish it or had swings of perspective that diluted my original ideas thus causing me to start over again.
But, here we are, and hopefully, this gets published eventually.
My playlist goes by many names, at the start, on YouTube Music, its name was ‘Songs I like’, this then transitioned to Spotify for a while under the same name. But then came my audio hobby, and there it was, ‘Songs I like Tidal edition’ Of course this was on Tidal, a ‘high res’ music streaming service that also promised to pay artists fairly and at the very least better than platforms like Spotify or Youtube. But one day my perspective on music shifted, I realized music was a part of how I see the world, and ‘Songs I like’ was transformed and rebranded to ‘The World in my ears’.
Because that's what music is to me. The world. In my ears.
I started listening to music on a more stimulatory and enjoyment-based level starting in late 2019, I remember my MSI branded headphones that I taped with clear packing tape because they were falling apart, I remember how wonderous the classic rock playlists of YouTube were to my still growing mind. My parents didn’t listen to music, at the very least not around me, so I never picked up road trip songs or however most people remember their parent's music. It was just myself, the world's noises, and the ever-deepening void that was my thoughts.
I remember many things that triggered me to finally proactively listen to music, many things that triggered other things, and many other things that I promise to never go back to.
Listening to music is a choice I made in my life when I realized music wasn’t the popular stuff my friends listened to, music isn’t just classical, music isn’t just pop, music isn’t just anything. Music is our world through our ears, summarized then sung about, it shows us the world's many facets through sound, it gets to describe our world in such a raw subjective, and human way. Music is a unique, full-body, full-mind experience that captivates anyone who cares to pay attention to it. It doesn’t matter what genre you listen to, you’ll feel it, you’ll think about it. That’s the power of Music in its purest form because it frees you.
Your mind can morph music and stitch it into whatever you choose. You just don't know it.
I used my enjoyment of music as a form of escapism from my life, as do many others. I used my enjoyment of music as a form of recognizing beauty in life. I used my enjoyment of music as a way to differentiate myself from others.
I used my enjoyment of music to better myself.
Because enjoying something, anything, is a fickle matter. Music is bound to personal opinion and a strong yet subconscious one at that. Just go mention the Grateful Dead to anyone on the street and you’ll get 3 answers: I hate jam bands with a passion, what? grateful dead? why are they dead and grateful? and They’re my favorite band!
What I want to get at with this example is that Music, in any way shape or form, is divisive in nature. But isn’t life itself divisive? Everyone seems to prefer being normal but we don't realize that normal doesn't exist and you should just go on with your life because it never will exist.
Music is just another way to view the world, and as a generalist, a new perspective is always appreciated.
I guess that's why I listen to music, and how I enjoy it so much. Because by enjoying music I enjoy life and the world as a whole and at the end of the day that's what matters to me the most.
Toodaloo reader!
Best,
The Author.
