There are weeks like this one—when I’ve absorbed enough news about Jordan Neely’s murder and the graphic horror that witnesses of the Texas mall shooting will never unsee and the endless delusional propaganda that drives unimaginable violence—when talking about play sounds petty and frivolous.
But I’m here expressly because I believe play is the antidote to all the bullshit. Not a tool to help us look away from harsh reality, but a way to tolerate it, maybe even integrate it. We talk about checking out a lot, about escaping, usually from reality. Sometimes we need distraction, the intentional numbing of our senses, so we can bear to live another day. Most of us, of course, go on to habitualize that checking out, and that is called addiction. We live in a time where addictive things are so readily available at every moment that resisting is a constant struggle. I was without my phone for maybe 16 hours this week, and I can’t even count how many times I reached for it in that window. As my buddy Paul K. Chapelle says, addiction is what happens when tangles of trauma interfere with our basic human need for transcendence.
Which brings me to music. Growing up we never had music playing in the house. Maybe in part because my stepmom was a music teacher and we listened to the plinking of right and wrong notes all day, but also because there was an unclear belief that “canned” (aka recorded) music wasn’t good for young children. I didn’t get my first CD player until 8th grade, when I rotated constantly between Macy Gray’s On How Life Is, Dido’s No Angel and Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection.
Two questions I dreaded most in adolescence were: “What do your parents do?” and “What’s your favorite band?” Music was something introduced exclusively through friends and I was never confident that I had my own taste, actually knew “what was good.” This insecurity has followed me into adulthood. Right now, I need to RSVP to my cousin’s wedding, but we’re supposed to name a song we want added to the wedding playlist and I’m totally paralyzed.
Don’t get me wrong—I know what I like. When I hear it. But I don’t know the name of the genre, or sometimes the band, and often (weirdly for a writer?) I pay less attention to the lyrics than the sounds. I know I like this song and this one and this one and also this one. One weirdly stubborn album over the years, meaning I’ve never really gotten sick of it, is the soundtrack to Bruce Brown’s surf film The Endless Summer. It was in a pile of records I inherited from my grandfather when I was 18, and has stuck around as a default feel-good sound. I can’t tell you why I love the song “Trailing” beyond that it sounds like the sun and allows my lens on the world to go wide.
Music is probably the single best tool for getting out of that purgatory of not-with-others-not-with-self I talked about a few weeks ago. It’s basically the opposite of addiction: it allows us to go into what we’re feeling or thinking about, there’s a healing that happens when you lay on the floor and listen to a sad song on repeat. Even wallowing means we’re in it. I have a lot in common with my musician friends, maybe because they’re writers, but also maybe because there’s an implicit shared understanding of how many important things happen in the spaces between things.
There are lots of ways to take in music, from really close listening to some vague awareness of a mood shift in the background. There’s listening to the music and then there’s allowing it to be just a launchpad for a wandering mind.
There are three main ways I listen:
1. While driving. Preferably as loud as it goes.
2. Headphones. Not while exercising or working, but as an activity. I learned this from Lisa.
3. At home over the speakers. Usually more as background, occasionally for dance party purposes.
But I forget about music. All the time. Like everything I write about here, it feels like an epiphany every time I remember. I’ve probably spent hundreds of hours of my life stuck in a rut that music could have helped me out of much sooner. As a depressive person, I tend to think that however I feel right now is how I’ll feel for the rest of the day (and often all time), so I throw in the towel early. Five minutes with headphones is sometimes all it takes.
I have managed to situate headphones into my writing life as a necessary tool. Working at the library with headphones and some generic focus playlist does wonders for the order of my mind. I remember to listen to podcasts when I clean the house because something about linear storytelling increases the chance I’ll finish the laundry before starting the dishes.
Those are, of course, productivity-based activities. I have things to do and a trick for better doing them. Remembering music as a tool for transcendence remains stubbornly elusive. But I remembered today, and that’s something.
Optional Assignment: Pick a song you once loved, but haven’t listened to in a long time. Listen to it on repeat at least 3 times, either:
alone in your car
while listening to headphones and doing nothing else
with others. Dance, sing along, sit in silence, just share it.
There’s a fine line between nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia and mining the past for things we may have forgotten that continue to be important in our lives today. Remember, there’s no goal here, that’s not play.
p.s. it’s funny-not-funny how many open source photos of people listening to headphones include an iPhone. At the very least, put yours in a pocket.
I sooooo agree about music's power to bring me into play!
Miriam Makeba « Pata Pata » suggestion for the wedding play list.
Love the idea of « canned » (vs fresh?) musique. I feel a big difference between musique on the iPad and the CD player.
I keep thinking about horizontal time that you wrote about a few weeks ago, and the many ways one might expand into it (do they all come down to play?).
Looking forward to your next piece!