I have a draft of a really long post on a similar topic, but it keeps sitting there and staring at me as I ponder whether I reveal too much of myself in it. So, consider this a stop-gap effort to at least describe how I’m changing my process when it comes to listening to music.
In the past, I have listened to any album sent to me, always open to a new discovery, while simultaneously actively tracking down other new music I hear about to keep abreast of everything that’s happening.
This made sense when I was out and about multiple nights a week to take in shows and had a daily responsibility to find interesting things to write about for a mainstream audience. I no longer have that responsibility, and I have grown somewhat concerned about what my approach to ingesting music has done to me internally. I am always trying to catch up, rarely have time to listen new releases more than 2 or 3 times if I am in love with them, and I almost never get to listen to older albums, no matter how much they mean to me.
On top of this, since 2017 I have gone through a litany of life-events that I feel changed me so much that even some of my old faves no longer resonate, and I often find myself looking to listen to something reassuringly familiar, and then get lost in 30 minutes of trying to decide which comfort-food album will take up precious time I could’ve spent listening to “new” bands. It’s like trying a find a movie on a streaming service and being frozen by too many options and too little time. It's the opposite of rejuvenating or relaxing.
And, quite honestly, I no longer feel there’s as much interest in music writing like mine these days. Yes, I think it’s still valuable and yes, I believe there is a core group of folks who still actively seek out music beyond passive delivery via algorithms … but that group grows smaller and smaller.
So, I am pulling back and trying to make a concerted effort to adjust my music consumption. I am intentionally culling albums from my potential listening queue before they even make it to ye olde tankPHONE for listening. And I am trying to grow less concerned “I’m losing touch” just because I don’t listen to every single thing that comes my way.
Since my written output has grown more scarce—meaning all my opinions and thoughts just bounce around my head like an ever increasingly cacophonous echo chamber—it doesn’t seem prudent to keep cramming my head with new music at the same rate I have for decades and decades.
And I now realize this “stop-gap” post managed to be almost as long as the post I’ve been sitting on…so we’ll see how this goes.
