Slow down, listen

I've been trying to change my listening habits recently, it bears some relation to me changing my phone, too. Neither of these things has much to do with poetry, you may reasonably say, but as there is some relevance to this blog in them, I'll explain:

One the blessings, and also curses, of the age of digital music has been the inexorable rise of playlists. Putting one together yourself is quite good fun, it puts me in mind of the painstakingly compiled mix-tapes of you're, in which one would either show off to friends or attempt to impress a girl (neither would ever work) with a carefully selected list of tracks designed to prove the coolness and worldly taste of the compiler. Nowadays, the ease of compilation lends itself to more prosaic usage, exercise, housework.

The playlist is also handy for discovering work new to you, I try to keep my listening habits fresh and not get stuck in a rut, so lists compiled by others are helpful for that.

But the case against is that your listening becomes atomised, variety becomes the default. Gratification is instant, neophilia the watchword. You bounce between artists and genres at a dizzying rate, something is lost in the maelstrom.

Recently I had to upgrade my phone, not something I particularly like doing, I find the short shelf life of a lot of technology somewhat depressing, and can't shake the feeling that I'm participating in my own destruction by ripping through rare earths and minerals at the rate of a phone every few years. But still, had to be done, and what with the state of the old phone, downloading all the stuff I had on there onto the new one was a non starter. 

I had to start again, a tabula rasa. This included a certain rapacious and notoriously tight-fisted streaming service (I should say here, I do buy gig tickets, merch and actual albums: support artists people!), who are one of the apps foisted on you as standard. As there was a free trial, I thought, might as well.

My first instinct was to put a playlist together. But I stopped, here was a chance to change things up, see what happens. I picked an album, one I hadn't listened to in many years (the Afghan Whigs "Congregation", since you ask), popped the headphones on and went for a run.

  

I won't say it was a revelation, but it did feel like a homecoming. I do listen to albums in their entirety at work, as I have an ageing CD player (and some aged CDs) in the corner, much to the perturbation of my youthful staff. But it's not really "listening" as such, more background music. To listen to an album start to finish, in order, with nothing else to do but hear (and put one foot in front of the other) felt fresh and unusual. I felt, suddenly, the urge to write.

I know, I know, being inspired by music, nothing new in that, but it felt like something I'd forgotten about. A disused room in the house, to use a somewhat hackneyed phrase (the urge to write may have returned, but that doesn't mean that I'm any better at it).

In a short-form world there is a case to be made for the long. In a time of sound bites and snippets, tweets, skeets and reels I've discovered I need to slow my mind down and allow it to work at a slower pace (easy when I'm running on these knees, fast isn't an option).

Since that moment I haven't abandoned the playlist entirely, but I'm making more effort to listen to albums in their entirety. And not just delving into my back catalogue, this only works if I also listen to new (or at least, new to me) music. Suddenly, I am exposed to new voices, sounds and concepts (the latest Kendrick Lamar, for example, is a sonic marvel), all of which feeds into the urge to create, to talk back to the new world I've consciously chosen to step into.

It seems oxymoronic, to embrace the new by stepping back to an old form, but I do find an album a more enriching experience, out on my painful, plodding runs, I am learning anew.