Last April I gave up my music. Or rather, I gave up control of my music. I decided that for the next 53 weeks I would listen solely to albums chosen by other people. Each week I would listen to one and only one album, at least once a day, and write about the experience. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Stupid? Without a doubt.
Why did I decide to do this? Boredom, largely. I was tired of the way I found myself listening to music, scrolling for tracks, choosing stations. Often I would buy a new album, listen to it twice, and never put it on again. All my listening felt fleeting, a skimming of the surface. I wanted engagement, wanted the music branded on the inside of my brain cells. Even if I hated every second of it, at least I would be really listening.
And I wanted to re-humanize the music that went into my head. Instead of some Amazon or iTunes algorithm telling me what to listen to, I wanted it to be real people who told me what they loved, what makes their day, what I should check out.
So I put myself in their hands. Other people's music, that's what I'm listening to.
Week 1: Thousand Petals by Guru Shabad Sing Khalsa
Chosen by: Kate Miller, massage therapist, yoga instructor
Day 1
In the arcade on far side of the food court where I sat two high school girls battled through a round of Dance Dance Revolution. Plainly experienced, they propped their weight on the railings behind each of them; minus the heaviness gravity normally imposed, their feet flashed across the squares, at moments in perfect sync, at others only just out of time. They reminded me of the epic dance-off Steven Colbert challenged K-Pop superstar Rain to, at the end of which the two men find themselves atop the DDR platforms, Rain's popstar feet moving at such velocity they eventually melt the game down, the smoke from the machine screening his superhero-like departure from the studio.
On the first of 372 days I found myself listening to the week's LP in the mall. From my position the DDR dancers looked strange, frenetic, sweaty and out of touch, because this world is gentle, there is no need for hurry, for worry, for competition; open arms are the order of the day. At least that was the message being pumped through earbuds to vibrate eardrums to trigger the brain to recognize this lulling, lullaby-ish haze of song I found myself floating in. Not that it was bad; on the contrary, as someone who generally despises places like "the mall," Guru Shabad's steady and calming tone, with its female shadow fleshing out each phrase, turned the crass consumerism into something I would almost call joy. "Oh look, shoes!" went my brain on Guru Shabad, "How orderly they are, just waiting for feet to fill them!" Or, "An eyebrow designer kiosk! What a great idea!" The whole experience became quite pleasant. I might have spent hours wandering past stores, window shopping for nothing, turning up the volume another couple notches to drown out the frantic beats issuing from behind the grey and black of Express and the shouting pink of Victoria's Secret.
The most difficult part of listening to Thousand Petals in such a public place was that, as the phrases worked their way down into my lungs and throat, it was all I could do to keep from intoning them out loud, to muffle the mantras that crept onto my tongue and began to wag it up and down. This is, after all, music meant to be sung along with; the purpose of the many mantras being for the tongue to touch in different combinations the 84 meridians located on the roof of the mouth, triggering a variety of physiological and emotional responses. In front of American Eagle a snatch of song escaped my lips, and the look a young girl just inside the store gave me made me clamp my teeth around my tongue, to settle it, to keep it quiet, though goodness how it wanted to sing.
Outside the mall it was pouring rain. In the parking lot a small carnival had been set up, merry-go-round, a miniature Ferris wheel, vendor trailers. No music blaring, no rides spinning. Just rain beating down on tin rooftops.
Day 3
This morning I felt for the first time how challenging this project might be. I sat down at my computer to begin my rounds of websites I traffic daily, and realized at least three of them are music-based; all featured links to new videos or tracks or remixes of older tracks, so much newness to look at and listen to. Even though I really really really wanted to check out Grimes' performance on Jools Holland, I refrained. I'm suffering for it; I still really want to watch it, but I won't. What needs to happen is not simply me continuing in a state of denial, because like a diet, that ain't going to work. A habit shift is needed.
Which is leading me to appreciate Thousand Petals as my introductory album all the more. Maybe my wife Kate, who recommended this album to me, realized something I hadn't when she chose this one. Kundalini Yoga, it turns out, is all about habit. It is about breaking habit and forming new ones. Many Kundalini sets are assigned for periods of 40 days, which is the amount of time believed needed to establish a new habit. (I won't even get into the significance of the number 40, which supposedly pops up crazy like all over the sacred texts of the world's religions.) So for now I'll look at this listening project in terms of 40 days; if I can get through the first 40, then I'll tackle the second. After all, there are only 9.3 sets of 40 in 53 weeks. So doable.
Week 3: III by Led Zeppelin
Chosen by: Bryce Yoder, college student
Day 1
Zeppelin's one of those bands I just never got into. I'd always felt in the back of my music-loving mind a blank space that I assumed was reserved for some as-yet-undiscovered amazingness, but which I am now discovering is the space my brain has, all this time, been reserving for Led Zeppelin. My first listen through of III it was like hearing entire sub-genres of the contemporary music world boiled down into one band. The White Stripes (or anything Jack White does), the Black Keys, Neutral Milk Hotel, and any other of the umpteen neo-blues bands out there, or even a more bluegrass-influenced band like the Avett Brothers, all have LZ tattooed on their foreheads. Whoever said that once the Led is in your blood, you can't get the Led out, well, it seems they were right.
The main reason that I never gave Zeppelin a chance in the past was the unavoidable heat-seeking missile that is Robert Plant's voice. I hated it. It honestly felt like he was wielding a weapon and striking me with it, one minute it was a knife he was slashing up my soft parts with, the next a lead pipe shattering my kneecaps. Back then, in middle school and high school, when all my friends were discovering LZ, I just didn't have the physical temperament to handle Plant. To my ears he was like fugu sashimi improperly prepared; I could sense he was a delicacy, but my nervous system kept insisting he was poisonous.
For the past week or so, every evening a neighbor kid has been driving one of those mini-motorcycles back and forth past our house for hours on end. It makes an awful sound, like someone is holding a distressed bumblebee up to a microphone and the amp is cranked to 11, like a symphony of chainsaws all tuned to the same horrific pitch. It is annoying to the point that I have considered following him in the car to see where he lives and having a little chat with his parents, I who love nothing more than to avoid a good conflict.
Last night the kid was coming down the road as I was getting the mail, so I stood by the mailbox and watched him ride past. Then I waited there while he turned around at the stop sign and watched him ride back in other direction. As he passed he cranked the accelerator, kicking the engine's whine up a notch; I chuckled; he was plainly cruising at max speed, but was going at tops a measly 15 m.p.h. Then it hit me: that mini-cycle sounded exactly like Robert Plant does at the beginning of "Immigrant Song," his "aah-ah-aaaah-AHH" piercing the skull, straightening the spine, shocking the body to attention.
Now when I hear the cycle blasting down the road I just say to myself, "Here comes Robert Plant!," and it becomes bearable. It's maybe even, to my buried teenage self the Led are slowly exhuming, a little bit rockin'.
Day 4
Evening. In the kitchen fixing supper. Salad topped with cilantro pesto tuna, on the side curried sweet potato fries. "Anything you want to listen to?" Kate said, iPod touch cradled in her palm. "Or are you cool with the quiet?"
"Whatever you want to put on. Quiet is fine, too. It's your call. I can't choose."
She looked at me askance. Normally I have an opinion about what we listen to. "So is this for real? You're really not going to put on any music except your album of the week for an entire year?"
A little less than a year left to go, I reminded her.
"You mean I get to choose what we listen to for the next year? I can play whatever I want, all the time?" She smiled. "That's really cool." And on came Snatam Kaur.
It has begun to dawn on me just how much of an exercise in control, and loss of control, this project truly is. We live in an age of control. iPods, smartphones, tablets, everything is projected inward, to the point that having absolute control over our music, our reading, our games, is an unquestioned must. All is image control, 24/7. We choose our device, our forum, our venue, our hotspot, our webpage, usually presented in a variety of prepackaged forms, all in the name of "self-expression."
Relinquishing that choice, even this one small piece of all the choices we are faced with in a day, is proving difficult. I find myself checking Pitchfork and thinking I want to listen to that, and that, and that ... as I scan the homepage. I find myself scrolling through iTunes, then quickly closing it before I put on something I shouldn't.
Still, 18 days in there isn't much music that I have missed. And there has been a certain relief I have felt at moments, at not having to choose what to listen to, not having to scroll and attempt to match my mood to one of the dozens of band names flashing past, picking the wrong one, the wrong one again, putting it on shuffle, turning it off, needing new music, always needing what's new ...
Resignation allows for a certain degree of relaxation. Though there are moments of longing for the hours spent scanning the webs for those four minutes of the novel, if not the new sound, mostly I feel more grounded. I know what my option is for the week. No choice needs to be made. Old, ugly, television-numb tenants in the rooms of my consciousness have been evicted and after remodeling the rooms are filling up with interesting, energetic folk. I can almost feel new synapses firing. The trees have more branches, the houses more windows. I am talking more.
In this country we are told, we have been convinced, that choice is what we desire, that choice is freedom. What if that isn't true? What if choice has become a prison of enthrallment? What if true freedom, the kind we equate with "happiness," rests not in choice but in its relinquishing?
