(Originally published in Spring 2009)
On Enjoyment
How do I enjoy something? Can I ever enjoy my favorite albums again? How do I even know what having something as a favorite album means? In this age of blah blah blah can I still hope to find something pleasurable about the things I'm already supposed to know how to take pleasure in?
On The Subject of Lists
Sometimes, in the midst of a crisis, I turn to making lists. I do this to rank the intensity of my personal feelings about albums I've heard many times and enjoyed in the past. Why I would choose to do this instead of trying to discover new music to feel excited about, who knows. It seems I'd rather continue to talk about the music I've heard a billion times without bothering to listen to it again or anything else.
I'm trying to imagine my mindset when I approach making a list. I'm probably doing it at the spur of the moment in a fit of compulsion. Maybe a sort of a desperate frenzy. It's as if I'm trapped in a haze after experiencing severe brain damage and am desperately grasping at anything that will help me re-experience happier moments of my life. This re-experiencing could seem like it's in some way interesting, but no, I'm drawn to doing it in the most droll, mundane way possible. Are there any genuine inspired parts left in this music for me to squeeze any more life out of? Will I finally hear something I never could before that will suddenly unearth a revelation? I don't know. But I still have a strong desire for this rediscovery, as if re-cataloging all of these things will be a channel to something essential about this music and myself that I somehow missed before.
There is only one kind of list that should mean anything to anyone - ten favorite albums, ten favorite films, ten favorite books, etc. That's the kind of list that you only dare to approach the possibility of assembling maybe a handful of times. It's heavy shit, and you carefully consider every option and the possible disastrous consequences of choosing one option over another. This is a list you show to people, after all, as a definitive representation of you. You don't want to give off a wrong impression. Should you go with the album that understood you better than everyone else when you were in highschool, but is embarrassing to even bring up now (unless you're trying to be ironic post-modern sort of person and follow the fad where you embrace only the most incredibly stupid things you liked at one time (but did you even like them then or were you just doing it to be part of the crowd?) in an attempt to suggest that the only real experiences of enjoyment are ones you had of something that didn't require much thinking, and that it's not possible to really enjoy something of more substance because it involves some sort of work, work which is antithetical to enjoyment, in which case fuck you) or the one that validates your personal aesthetic and/or worldview now (whatever that means, you fucking loser)? Hey, but what about the one that got you through a deep fit of depression when you were at school and everyone seemed fake and hollow and unfriendly and it just seemed like the world thought you were shit and didn't want you to have any happiness but you can't listen to it anymore because it just reminds of that time and you don't exactly need to relive it to remember how shitty it was (or maybe you do purposefully relive it to hold it against people, you fucking one-dimensional JD Salinger character)? And what about that one that you really haven't heard that many times, but you know it's good and you want to give off the impression of being a cultured, intelligent person with cultured, intelligent tastes to other people (in which case, you'd be a boringly predictable fraud, which you already know that you are anyway)? Important stuff.
Endless rearrangement of long-gone thoughts and memories, brain-damaged regurgitation, comatose reimagination. I don't enjoy it, so why am I doing this?
My iPod Is My iSoul
I'm listening to some music on my computer right now through headphones (the album Under The Bushes Under the Stars by Guided By Voices). The music consists of mp3 files that I have saved on my hard drive. Mp3's are a collection of compressed (so that a given file doesn't take up too much space) digital audio data gathered from the also compressed audio of a compact disc, itself a collection of 1's and 0's gathered either by a CD burning machine using a laser to write in these 1's and 0's to the surface of the disc to approximate the original analog recording or a computer's own approximation of a live audio performance physically fed into it (or music programmed into the computer with software from an already digital source of sounds).
The sequence of these mp3 files is determined by a playlist on my computer. A playlist is a linear progression of different tracks that moves from one track to the next, approximating the linear progression of a CD or vinyl record or tape. Each track is a collection of audio data (usually a song) that runs a defined duration of time. I can skip to any track (or any part of a track) at any time, almost instantly. And unlike tape/vinyl/CD's I can change the order of tracks almost instantly (not to mention that if I have an audio editing program, I can edit the all of the content of the track itself).
I don't think that I'm experiencing this music through thought. I can recognize the motifs and the chord progressions used, and probably come to a conclusion that the same few chords and melodies are getting recycled. But I don't feel that way about it. I hear each track as a separate entity. So then, can this music be a list?
No, it must not. Nor must it be a mathematical formula, or a machine, even if it is made with machines. Nor does it seem to be an argument, where every element contained within exists for a articulated purpose, and its strengths and weaknesses are carefully considered before one ultimately comes to a conclusion on its usefulness or validity. This music is too arbitrary and strange for that. There is a structure, but the structure is only partial, it doesn't make logical sense. Does that make it bad?
Maybe it is bad, but maybe it doesn't deserve to be endlessly broken into parts and analyzed like a puzzle. Is there really any puzzle here? Maybe it is less of a puzzle of thoughts and more of a soup of ideas, a progression of feelings spilled off from the minds of other human beings. Maybe I've just been conditioned to think about music in the other way. Maybe I can't really judge beyond personal preference whether or not I find it to be good, but it is deeply felt, and needs to be experienced without judgment. Maybe music needs to be heard.
Because of this, it is a strong possibility that our newfound power to endlessly customize our music should not be taken lightly. Art is supposed to be about submission. Maybe we need to submit ourselves to the world of a work of art so we can have any chance of appreciation or enjoyment of something it for what it is, and it doesn't matter what we think it should be. Maybe having the power to modify something does not give us the right to do it. Maybe we run the risk of moving from interesting new ideas into endless amalgamations of references. And maybe we don't need to relive the past any goddamn more, maybe we need a present that people are interested in living in.
Perhaps it's time to slow down the constant noise of music criticism so that we can let the music itself catch up to us, so that we aren't endlessly vomiting out the same meaningless terms, anticipating trends that don't exist, thinking that we can create an idea of the ideal based on what we think other people want. Perhaps we need to wake up from the daydream where we constantly venerate the past because we're too scared of not knowing the present and instead remove ourselves from these excessive and meaningless labels of genre, scene, lifestyle, whatever, that have long ago ceased to have any real meaning.
Perhaps now more than ever is a time to finally be sincere about something. Maybe it's time to become excited about music again.
-Jack Ryerson
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