My Relationship With Music Has Changed

+++ title = “03” date = 2020 +++

Rewind to 1999. I’ve got a cd wallet in my car that has about 12-15 slots for CDs. I’m at the second hand record shops every week selling old CDs and buying new ones. I’ve got a boom box and I’ve split its speakers across my room.

I’m probably playing my music too loud. Keeping my parents up. So I switch to headphones and surf the web. This was back when I could do both things at the same time.

It’s too much now, of course. I can’t focus on music while I’m fighting people in my head on social media. I can’t put on an album in the car without switching to a different one, although I would’ve done this much more in the 90’s if it were easier (I listened to tapes until about 97).

I make playlists too, so switching between albums is automated. Before, I’d get lost in an artist’s world; now, they get lost in mine.

I was talking to someone recently who said they’re done with music, they prefer podcasts. No disrespect. It’s just that I wonder if it’s music that sucks or our ways of consuming it.

Could we return to a simpler time? Only by giving up convenience and novelty and algorithms. Only by returning to searching the bins at a record store.

It’s not too late.