Since I first started this, a lot has
changed. As physical media gave way to owned digital media which has given way
to streaming the amount of available music has grown as explosively as its
monetary value has diminished. A vast collection of music, even within the most
jealously guarded, narrowly defined genre ghettos is available within moments
of committing to a keyword search.
With very few exceptions (and thankfully
they do still occasionally appear), I can
own it all. I can hear it all. The
only obstacles are science: biology and physics. There are only so many hours a
day that I can stay awake. Only so many minutes I can commit to listening.
The inevitable outcome is that anytime I am
presented with an opportunity to listen, I face a deep existential problem:
reflection or exploration? Listen to something old, for memory’s sake, for
nostalgia, for deepening, for resonance or listen to something new, for
excitement, titillation and the potential to add to the list that defines me
musically. Naturally, had I the time, then the question would not have the
weight it does. Nevertheless, this problem lies at the heart of my daily listening
and more often than not is resolved as I fall asleep with headphones on at the
end of another long day.
Where once I had clear musical “roots”, now
my location stretches to the horizon. What had been a small, neat garden has
been replaced by an unruly and ultimately unknowable forest. Although I
maintain a degree of lament for this change, as in a real forest, walking,
watching, noticing, reflecting… all of these activities connect me to a wider
whole. I suppose that what lies at the crux of the earlier question is a
persistent, low-level angst that at any one time in the forest, I can only know
what is immediately around me. And that in a finite temporal stream, both the
desire to know and the desire to return, both tradition and hope are simultaneously
bi-directional and proportionate.
Which leaves me to lead to a single
conclusion. Admit the angst and just keep movin’.
