If you know me well (or not that well), the conceit of the following blog will make a lot of sense.
I've decided to listen to every single album I have on my iPod in alphabetical order. From "All Hail Bright Futures" to "You're Dead." That's 178 albums containing 1,853 songs by 121 artists. The total runtime is 5.3 days, or approximately 127 hours. At about 4 hours a day, that's almost 32 days of listening.
Never let it be said that I'm not ambitious.
The start of this project was very much as a challenge for me and a challenge to me. It is going to be a challenge to not deviate from alphabetical order, to not fall back into something I'm more comfortable with, to not skip something I don't love. But it's also a challenge to me. Why do I have so much music that I have made immediately available to me? Why don't I listen to all that much of it? I generally cycle between 5-10 albums regularly, with another 30 or so thrown in occasionally. There's music on my phone I've listened to once, and probably more that I've never listened to. And yet, when I try to clear out how much music I have, I always end up keeping the vast majority of it. Why can't I let go of music I don't listen to? And, on top of the challenge, it was also borne out of an urge to explore. I like music a lot. I want to find new music that I like a lot. I want to rediscover music that I've let go of. I want to expand what my ear can handle.
Any while all of those things are definitely still true, of course the journey has already taught me more than finishing probably ever will.
So far, I've gotten through 3 albums: "All Hail Bright Futures" by And So I Watch You From Afar, "All My Friends Are Funeral Singers" by Califone, and "Allelujah! Don't Bend!Ascend!" by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I'm currently working my way through Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno. "All Hail Bright Futures" was a great one to start out on because it's an album I really enjoy, but don't listen to too much. So it sounded fresh and set me off on the right track.
"All My Friends Are Funeral Singers" is an album I've listened all the way through perhaps once, although there's one track on there ("Funeral Singers") that I love and have listened to many times. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed listening to it. I didn't feel any of the sense of impatience that I usually associate with trying to force myself to listen to certain music. And while I highly doubt the album will be cracking my Last.fm top weekly listens for a while, it's certainly one I want to return to.
"Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!" is also an album that I haven't listened to entirely that much, although again I have one track ("Mladic") on it that I particularly love. It's a relatively short album for the band, clocking in at only 55 minutes (as opposed to "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antenna To Heaven's" 87 minutes), but it's still an incredibly experience. Godspeed truly are the masters of long-form post-rock, and this listen was as magical as I expected it to be.
Where things started to get kind of interesting was when I started listening to "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" by Brian Eno. I've listened to it several times, although none recently, so I'm not super familiar with it. I listened to the majority of it while walking around campus, which caught my attention because it's not the type of music I'd normally listen to while walking. It's, as the name notes, very ambient, very relaxed, and not super driven. My most recent walking go-to, for contrast, has been "The Argument" by Fugazi, a rocking post-hardcore album. And yet, I found the experience of walking while listening to "Ambient 1" truly beautiful. I wouldn't say it was life-changing, but it was the sort of bubble of presentness and peace that I strive for everyday. I walked along totally absorbed in what was right in front of me, acutely aware of the buildings in a way I'm not normally, feeling the cold on my face with an appreciation I had been lacking. It was a wonderful walk across campus and back home, and it all seemed to be driven by the music, which shook me out of my normal routine and into something just a bit more magical.
And so, I again learn the importance of presentness, and hope to incorporate that into this challenge. If I can experience that sort of awareness through every 4th album, then this month will be an incredible one.
I will (hopefully) update again in about a week!
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