I love aggressive music.
At a glance, I realize that sounds juvenile. A real adult is supposed to
like classy music, music that’s inoffensive and palatable, music
that comes in vinyl records at Walmart and Target and wherever. Taylor
Swift if you’re a girl, Drake if you’re a guy. Or something
like that, I don’t listen to Top 40. I only found out that songs
were grouped into albums only a few years ago, after all, designed to be
consumed in an ordered sequence instead of piecemeal and at the mercy of
the algorithm of whatever website you’re on.
In a lot of ways, I think my consumption of music, particularly at my
lowest point, reflects my consumption of alcohol - continuously trying
to seek a stronger and more impactful hit, one that will take me away
from my present situation to a greater degree before the high of
listening to it for the first five or so times wear off. I like music
based on the way it “scratches” my brain. There’s
quote I really like from Wired:
“If talking about music is, as someone once said, like dancing
about architecture, then talking about color is like doing a trapeze act
in zero-g on a space station.”
Talking about music = dancing about architecture? Absolutely. I wish I
could explain why I listen to the same songs over and over and over
again, why the swanky percussive thumps of Destroyer from the Finals OST
or the incomprehensible screeching of Afourteen in imgonnarelapsesoon!
tickle my brain the way they do, even though the former has no lyrics at
all and the latter might as well. I wish I could explain why I press my
phone’s speaker up against my eardrum before I hop into the shower
to wash away the day in hot water, vaguely aware that I’m
facilitating a crippling phone addiction and yet unable to pull away
from the song of the day/week/month/whatever. I wish I could explain why
I have an “AMV” YouTube playlist, where certain songs
trigger the same imaginary animated music video to go through my head
over and over again every time I listen. And yet I can’t.
I remember talking to my friend Nathan at the beginning of cross country
practice one day, and he was talking about how excited he was for a new
album from one his favorite artists, and I responded with something
along the lines of “eh, to me music is like a flavor of ice cream
- if I see a new one at the grocery store, I’ll be happy, but
it’s not something I have to have.” Similarly, I remember my
friend Lucas asking me what type of music I listened to - also during
cross country practice - followed by his blank expression as I replied
with something along the lines of “the type of music doesn’t
really matter, it’s more about how it makes me feel.” Later,
when the question popped up again, I had enough social awareness to
respond with “Eminem,” producing approving glances and
murmurs from my teammates. But this is a lie, claiming that I’m
beholden to a particular artist - even after hours of listening to
popular, “essential” albums during my drives to and from
college (The Dark Side of the Moon, Nevermind, Weezer (Blue Album),
among others) - I still haven’t found an artist to worship. Even
after finding some artists that I like more than others - Interpol,
mainly - I still hesitate to hit the “play” button on songs
that I haven’t heard from them, worried that I’ll be
disappointed. Why fix something that isn’t broken? Why risk
wasting a minute of my life?
At my lowest points, when my mind is liberated by alcohol, free to short
circuit to the inevitable conclusion that life is meaningless, as
it’s currently doing now, my view of music as a tool, rather than
an experience, reaches a feverish pitch, and I sink back into my
Steelcase Leap, listening to the likes of Lil Darkie and Nascar Aloe and
Lil Toe, wanting the laughably bad lyrics and in-your-face instrumental
to rub away my essence, like steel wool scrubbing a pot, rubbing away
the filth that’s accumulated on the exterior even if it damages
the material underneath. To say nothing of the volume with which I
listen to music - a steady 44 on my laptop has crept up to 50 in the
past year, reaching as high as 60 with songs that I’ve listened to
a lot previously, as though the higher volume will reveal something new,
something undiscovered - I don’t know where this habit will take
me. Maybe it’s a byproduct of my nomophobia, of my general
Internet addiction, but encountering music that rubs my brain in a
pleasing way is getting harder and harder to find, especially now that I
no longer can subscribe to Spotify Premium or YouTube Music at a student
discount. YouTube recommends the same songs, over and over, and
I’m scared to try others.
Ah, well. Back to pure silence, now that I’ve reached the end of
this entry and the metallic pings of my cheap wireless keyboard can no
longer fill the air. Only an hour and a half to kill before the oblivion
of sleep.