media can teach us
"You need to eat, just like you need to listen to music," Joanna Newsom told Arthur magazine in 2006, right around the release of Ys. "[B]ut it never feels good if you do it like that. So I am trying to set my life up in a way where I don’t have to listen to music anyway other than putting on a record and sitting and listening."
I've been listening to a lot of Joanna Newsom's music recently. Today I finally started diving into her third album, Have One on Me, which is the length of three "normal" albums. It definitely demands the attention that she mentions in the quote above.
The thing that really struck me about this quote, though, was how listening to albums this way is similar to, say, reading a book. This might not be true for everyone, but I personally can't concentrate on reading a book if there's a lot of background noise or things going on around me that divert my attention. As a result, I usually need to read in a controlled environment so I can give whatever book I'm reading the attention I think it deserves.
Should we think of music the same way? I think we should, and I sometimes do. I still remember my stepsister telling me a few years ago how surprised she was that I sometimes just listen to music without doing anything else, like writing a paper or working out or cleaning. However, these days I listen to music more passively than actively, whether it's at work or while riding my bike. It's hard in this age of distraction to clear your schedule and mind to focus on a task like listening to a new album - even harder when the album is two hours long like Have One on Me. Even now, I'm listening to it in the background as I write this. But similar to how it's more enjoyable to have a three-course meal at a great restaurant with a close dinner companion than it is to shovel oatmeal into your mouth before work while checking email on your phone, music can be (and often is) more enjoyable when it's the focal point rather than a background noise.
This episode of Breaking Bad that I watched today, "Say My Name," made me think even more than I normally do about the big What's the Point of Anything question.
WALT: Being the best at something is a very rare thing. You don't just toss something like that away. And what, you wanna squander that potential? Your potential? Why? To do what?
JESSE: I don't know.
WALT: Well, think. To do what, Jesse?
JESSE: I'll-- I'll figure it out, all right?
WALT: Look at you. What have you got in your life, huh? Nothing. Nobody. Oh, wait. Yes. Video games and go-carts
JESSE: Mr. W--
WALT: And when you get tired of that, what then?
(Sorry, I'm too lazy to fix this color scheme from the copy/paste I did)
This is going to be less focused because I need to go to bed. While watching this scene, I kept agreeing with Jesse, thinking to myself, "Five million dollars is a lot of money! Take it and get out of the meth business! Then your wife will forigve you and you'll be set for life!" But then what would Walt do?
After the episode ended, I kept thinking Jesse could spend his days being someone's Big Brother or volunteering in other ways and generally Doing Good to try to make up for all the pain and death he's (mostly) inadvertently caused people while making and selling meth. Use eight hours a day to volunteer and improve the community in different ways - it doesn't matter that he won't get paid for anything because he has five million dollars.
Later in the episode, the DEA agent Gomez says Mike will live a "sad old man life" (or something like that) now that he's no longer involved in the meth operation. But is that so bad? Mike loves his granddaughter and wants to take care of her. She brings joy to his life. But when he's not seeing her, he mostly just hangs out in his house and watches TV. Maybe that isn't a great life, but who is anyone to say one way or the other?
An episode of a show I used to caption, Inspector Lewis, features the titular character trying out retired life. He decides he wants to built a rowboat, but gets bored and frustrated with it (it falls apart during a montage). He mostly misses being a cop, so he goes out of retirement to work part-time for Oxford Police again. His life is meaningless and empty without the job filling that hole inside of him.
I used to always think that if stumbled upon a few million dollars, I would be perfectly content to stop working and spend my days reading books and listening to music. Maybe that's still true, but more and more I feel like that would be a lonely, isolating life. I would probably still do some sort of work (or I would take all the music I listened to and books I read and try to let it influence me creatively somehow, though I still have a ways to go before I could write anything good or make music that's enjoyable). Or maybe I'd go the hypothetical Jesse route and volunteer a lot.
It's a good show.
I stated typing this a few weeks ago. Might as well include it here without amending it:
I got a new job at WGBH as a programming coordinator; I started a month ago. My bosses decide what shows air on WGBH and all the other channels we run (like WGBX and The World), and I input their decisions into a database that goes out to a bunch of different people with their own responsibilities (printing a program guide, posting the schedules online).
It's almost 2017 and I am 29.
I've been listening to a lot of Joanna Newsom's music recently. Today I finally started diving into her third album, Have One on Me, which is the length of three "normal" albums. It definitely demands the attention that she mentions in the quote above.
The thing that really struck me about this quote, though, was how listening to albums this way is similar to, say, reading a book. This might not be true for everyone, but I personally can't concentrate on reading a book if there's a lot of background noise or things going on around me that divert my attention. As a result, I usually need to read in a controlled environment so I can give whatever book I'm reading the attention I think it deserves.
Should we think of music the same way? I think we should, and I sometimes do. I still remember my stepsister telling me a few years ago how surprised she was that I sometimes just listen to music without doing anything else, like writing a paper or working out or cleaning. However, these days I listen to music more passively than actively, whether it's at work or while riding my bike. It's hard in this age of distraction to clear your schedule and mind to focus on a task like listening to a new album - even harder when the album is two hours long like Have One on Me. Even now, I'm listening to it in the background as I write this. But similar to how it's more enjoyable to have a three-course meal at a great restaurant with a close dinner companion than it is to shovel oatmeal into your mouth before work while checking email on your phone, music can be (and often is) more enjoyable when it's the focal point rather than a background noise.
This episode of Breaking Bad that I watched today, "Say My Name," made me think even more than I normally do about the big What's the Point of Anything question.
WALT: Being the best at something is a very rare thing. You don't just toss something like that away. And what, you wanna squander that potential? Your potential? Why? To do what?
JESSE: I don't know.
WALT: Well, think. To do what, Jesse?
JESSE: I'll-- I'll figure it out, all right?
WALT: Look at you. What have you got in your life, huh? Nothing. Nobody. Oh, wait. Yes. Video games and go-carts
JESSE: Mr. W--
WALT: And when you get tired of that, what then?
(Sorry, I'm too lazy to fix this color scheme from the copy/paste I did)
This is going to be less focused because I need to go to bed. While watching this scene, I kept agreeing with Jesse, thinking to myself, "Five million dollars is a lot of money! Take it and get out of the meth business! Then your wife will forigve you and you'll be set for life!" But then what would Walt do?
After the episode ended, I kept thinking Jesse could spend his days being someone's Big Brother or volunteering in other ways and generally Doing Good to try to make up for all the pain and death he's (mostly) inadvertently caused people while making and selling meth. Use eight hours a day to volunteer and improve the community in different ways - it doesn't matter that he won't get paid for anything because he has five million dollars.
Later in the episode, the DEA agent Gomez says Mike will live a "sad old man life" (or something like that) now that he's no longer involved in the meth operation. But is that so bad? Mike loves his granddaughter and wants to take care of her. She brings joy to his life. But when he's not seeing her, he mostly just hangs out in his house and watches TV. Maybe that isn't a great life, but who is anyone to say one way or the other?
An episode of a show I used to caption, Inspector Lewis, features the titular character trying out retired life. He decides he wants to built a rowboat, but gets bored and frustrated with it (it falls apart during a montage). He mostly misses being a cop, so he goes out of retirement to work part-time for Oxford Police again. His life is meaningless and empty without the job filling that hole inside of him.
I used to always think that if stumbled upon a few million dollars, I would be perfectly content to stop working and spend my days reading books and listening to music. Maybe that's still true, but more and more I feel like that would be a lonely, isolating life. I would probably still do some sort of work (or I would take all the music I listened to and books I read and try to let it influence me creatively somehow, though I still have a ways to go before I could write anything good or make music that's enjoyable). Or maybe I'd go the hypothetical Jesse route and volunteer a lot.
It's a good show.
I stated typing this a few weeks ago. Might as well include it here without amending it:
I got a new job at WGBH as a programming coordinator; I started a month ago. My bosses decide what shows air on WGBH and all the other channels we run (like WGBX and The World), and I input their decisions into a database that goes out to a bunch of different people with their own responsibilities (printing a program guide, posting the schedules online).
It's almost 2017 and I am 29.