Yesterday I posted what I see as one of my most important posts in a while. It wasn’t the kind of free flowing exploration ideas and emotions which are my favorite to write. But I did two things in that post that mattered a lot.
Firstly, I finally managed to make a case for why I enjoy things that are “weird”. I haven’t thought it was something I needed to explain since I was young and gave up on trying. 80% of my friends are into “weirder” stuff than I am now anyway, but as my world branches back out into “normie” society (I hate these words, honestly, but we need words that everyone understands), I find mysef in more situations where people do not understand me.
But 16 year old me and 23 year old me would be proud! I think I’ve explained it well enough that I might actually convince someone to join the dark side and get a mohawk or start farming vegetables in the front lawn or try polyamory or live in the amazon for a year or something like that. Or maybe just try some music out of their comfort zone!
The second thing I achieved was finding a more focused version of why I am here, what I bring to this world, and it goes something like this:
You don’t need to like everything. You can even have strong criticism against somethings. But if you dismiss something simply because you don’t get it, you are doing yourself and the world a disservice.
Yes we have limited time in a day and we can’t learn the history and details of everything, but the world needs more innocent curiosity. We need more explorers who explore for the sake of their own growth and understanding. We need more ambassadors between different cultures and subcultures (a culture being any identifiable group of people, including neighborhoods, companies and people with similar interests and habits).
Music is a wonderful way to explore the world and connect with people, to learn about yourself, to make sense of your feelings and the world.
I’ve never once uttered the words “I love music” in earnest because that feels like the most obvious self evident thing in the world. “I love breathing air!”.
Oh, do you now?
But I could spend hours telling you about little details that I love in particular songs and why. I can talk all about how a single song changed me, and not one single song but hundreds of songs, so many have had a profound impact on me.
That’s what I want to do now, to show how music can be a collaboration between artist and listener, and how the context of the flow of your life at a given time creates a unique way to experience each and every song, and in fact each and every other thing in existence.
I want to show some examples of how the ugly can be gorgeous and how the sad can be euphoric, and how beauty and pain and love and suffering are all things worth exploring.
I have a feeling I won’t be able to finish in this post and this will become an ongoing project that influences how I share my own art and collaborate with others in the future.
Context is everything
Imagine your driving down the highway at full speed for the very first time alone. Imagine the sun is shining down on you and you open the window to feel the wind blow across your face. You’ve been cooped up in your hometown for your whole life and now you finally have a chance to explore, even if just a limited capacity.
You want to bask in that feeling of freedom. You could turn on the radio and let a DJ or automated programming decide or you could put your playlist on and just listen to whatever comes up. By why leave it to chance when you could multiply this feeling by 1000.
That was me at 17.5 years old.
Here’s the song I picked to crank the feeling of freedom up to a million:
https://youtu.be/99HwUWKGc3c?si=Jx9Hm2oBSVNmC-9Y
I remember that moment decades later! The song turned the moment from something ordinary to something worth remembering. And it fit perfectly!
Whether or not you like or understand this style of music or his voice or the lyrics, whether or not you would choose the same, you get it don’t you? The song speaks for itself, even if you ignore the lyrics!
This song had a very different meaning when I listened to it in my room at night. If anything it made me crave such freedom. I could play it at a party to raise the mood or when driving to work and there would be nothing wrong with that, but in those situations the song doesn’t have it’s full effect. It’s only brought a fraction of it’s power.
Zoom out.
Now imagine you are in your early 20’s on your way to a date. It’s a bit late in the evening to meet, which feels like an unspoken agreement that this could get intimate. It might not but that’s not off the table.
You talk for an hour or two and you really like this person but you don’t feel a strong attraction and you get the sense that neither do they. Somewhere in the conversation you end up coming clean and friend zone each other.
You end up talking to morning and feel a deep sense of appreciation that even though there were no butterflies, even though no one is getting lucky tonight, even though you are still alone, you are reminded that people can be kind and pure sometimes.
It’s 4:45. They offer to let you stay on the couch but the sun is already coming up and your apartment is a 25 minute walk so you decline and agree to meet again as friends. You give each other a hug and start off through the empty streets whose shadows are slowly melting into the reflection of the sun on the pavement.
Every 5 or so minutes a service worker passes you by, on the way to work. Maybe they work for a hotel or maybe for the subway, but they are half asleep and could be the only other humans alive as far as you know.
You put on your headphones:
https://youtu.be/6w9mUhRd3MM?si=pK9k7n3hGKJTgNV5
For the first time in your 3 years here, you feel the city is letting you see it, naked and unadorned. It’s way more beautiful than you realized. The way the light shines through the trees on the pavement. The stained glass of a big church and the way old archetecture and new architecture blend together.
You feel like you’ve been let in on a secret, like you’ve been initiated, like you’ve made contact to the spirit of the city.
And meanwhile Miho Hatori’s beautiful vocal voice keeps the past and future away and makes it easy to be fully present, as the Brazillian cuica barks like a dog in the background.
This is before Bosa Nova has cemented itself as mediocre cafe music, and it’s a Baden Powel song so it’s the best there is.
Your heart is at peace and tears come to ypur eyes because you never realized you could be this happy alone. It may not last for long, maybe it’ll be gone by the evening but you’ll always have this moment, this secret dance with the city.
True story.
I’m not sure anything else would have helped me to make peace between the manmade concrete and the nature creeping through the wind blowing the leaves quite like this music.
And if you are curious about the original Baden Powel song, it kicks off the album Os Afros Sambas which in my opinion is one of the most underated albums of all time (and there are two versions of it, I prefer the live one with the red cover):
https://youtu.be/1tBhFAHho3c?si=uN2oVXIXGa4XOXPQ
A chef tends to know more than one recipe. If thry have a real passion for food, they explore all kinds of flavors and ingredients. The more they experiment, the better food they can make. It’s the same with music and creating these moments for yourself and for others.
I used to go to a shisha shop (flavored tobacco, nothing illegal) twice a week. I hadn’t intended on smoking and have still never smoked cigarettes to this day, but I like a shisha once in a while still.
The shop staff was one of the most talented DJ’s you could hope for in such a context. He would always pay attention to how different people brought different energy to the shop and how the conversations and silence would flow. Then he’d adjust his playlist with a mastery that made us all forget where we were. As I said, there was nothing illegal in the pipes, but you had to second guess sometimes simply because he was so good at directing the mood of the shop.
There were so many moments when we’d look across the room at a stranger and realize they were just as into the music as we were and we’d nod and smile and keep listening.
I remember it was him who helped me understand the mastery of James Blake, whose music proves the power of minimalism and atmosphere:
https://youtu.be/oOT2-OTebx0?si=UaRR9JF4uK4cdxCx
There aren’t many other songs that can do so much with so little, and James Blakes first album is full of them. If this doesn’t take you to the border between this reality and another, you need better speakers or better headphones.
This song is nothing if not spacious. It’s not what he plays but what he doesn’t play. Your body will natural learn to keep the ryhthm even when he pauses, and when the beat comes back, it hits even harder. If you ever wanted to try and improvise some backup vocals, they’d likely come out easier on this than almost anything else. You could sing a single note and hold it and it’d likely sound great!
You merge with music if you let yourself. Past and future disappear as you let life hyptonize you through the simplest of steady, atmospheric beats.
I don’t think I’ve ever known anything that embodies “Less is More” like this album, and if you haven’t heard the whole thing, please do, it’s one that so many famous artists realize the brilliance of but most casual listeners do not.
https://youtu.be/KJZ13SyRXhU?si=9A9TalpRuttJuCmA
And seriously, some music requires decent headphones. They don’t have to be top notch but nothing you would buy for less than $10, and definetly no hard plastic earbuds. If it cost $30+ at a fair price it’s probably good enough. In some countries maybe you can find something decent. I prefer soft headed earbuds, but a pair of fancy ear muff headphones are also ok. Iphone headphones are overpriced but an acceptable standard. The important thing is that you can hear both the treble and bass. And then either listen in a relativey quiet place or turn it up as high as you can without straining yourself
I use iphone headphones just cause they were given as a gift and House of Marley speakers at home. I’m sure therr are much better choices and there are also decent chepaer choices but I thought they sound quite good for the price of $150.
As you can tell I don’t know all that much about headphones and speakers, all I care abour is that the sound is full and balanced enough to not sound like a telephone and that the speakers won’t break easily from listening at loud but reasonable levels.
Not the most exciting way to end a post, so let me throw in one last song, something I’ve been listening to lately thanks to my partner being recommended it on youtube….an epic journey of a gentle warrior poet:
https://youtu.be/tdkhGltrNyc?si=ZdOIflVrVB5ANLXb
And if you like my sense of music at all and are curious about my music, search “I+Everything sun shone blue” on any streaming platform or youtube! A bit of anrough recording but songs I am proud of writing. My next will be more polished!
“Mirror” by I+Everything MV
https://youtu.be/fxzjCc1bQz0
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