My days are spent mostly in silence, or in noise of my own making - I do not listen to recorded music purely for enjoyment or for background ambiance. I never have.
Live music? Well, I love that stuff and I make some music-like noise of my own. But I only listen to recorded pieces if I am trying to learn them, or have chosen them to dance to for exercise.
My husband was a recorded music freak. When he died I gave the hundreds of CD's he'd collected away at his memorial - I had no need of them.
Now that I am cleaning out the house, I have come across hundreds of LPs he collected before we even met almost forty years ago. Boxes and boxes of albums that we schlepped from one abode to another. I don't remember his ever playing these records, and I must have ignored the sound if he did.
A week ago @metametheus posed this challenge: @metametheus/listening-to-the-wind,
The idea is to switch a little something up, to create a small disruption in our daily routine and see where it leads. I decided I would finally listen to music during the day, and I would use those records as my source. Sounded simple enough, and I'd get something done - sorting through those boxes to see if I had anything valuable or if I even wanted to keep any of them.
Here are the records.There is one more box in the basement still. I cleared out the lower shelf to have some sorting space and Patches couldn't resist hopping right in.
I lost a couple of days getting a device to listen to them with. I decided to order a cheap record player. I thought this one would hook up to my favorite speakers, or be able to work with a wifi speaker I have, or at the very least with a tiny but powerful speaker I use with my computer, but of course it doesn't. If I were to get this task started in time to make an entry to the challenge, I had no choice but to listen to the records via this silly thing and it's tinny scratchy speakers.
Since one has to regularly change records, it had to be very handy, and so I set this baby up on my kitchen table.
What to listen to first? I started with the first album I pulled out of the box, "Everybody's Talkin'" performed by Fred Neil, and it was a GREAT album! I've got that one playing again right now. It's a keeper
Before this turns into an essay on the albums and my thoughts about the music, I'd best pull back to the contest and how the supposedly tiny disruption affected my life.
Truth be told, I may have chosen the wrong disruption for the contest. This was not a tiny change, it was a lot of work! It is certainly beneficial though - as I listen to the records I think many things. I figure it might be interesting and germane to the contest to write some of these thoughts down as I have them. Most of these are from today, which is both the last day of the contest and the first day I got into the swing of changing the records and wanting to hear more:
Dylan is depressing.
Was Michael ever a Dead Head, with all these Dead albums?
So many Chubby Checkers! These could not have been Michael's and I imagine that his parents, who danced together until they could dance no more, would twist their nights away.
Did he listen to Fred Neil when we were on the outs?
I'd love to be a back up singer!
It IS possible to have music playing and still get stuff done, like right now.
I really dig Thelonius Monk, especially In Walked Bud..
Roberta Flack!
I think I'll just listen to music today instead of practicing. That counts, right?
Even Dylan's upbeat love songs are depressing. How does he do that? His lyrics are cool though. I might like his work better as poetry.
I need to find out more about Maeretha Stewart! Thank you Bob Dylan!
I like to listen to music while I wash dishes.
This actually COULD be the beginning of a meaningful change!
I'm wrapping this post up to the strains of Yusef Lateef, another keeper. Hubert Laws blew my mind. I've just started listening to these things and can't stop playing them one right after the other. Maybe I'll start listening to more music and find a new path to holiness. Too bad there's no Jethro Tull.
Great challenge @metametheus!
these are the first three I listened to
This is my entry to @metametheus/listening-to-the-wind
All images are my own unless otherwise stated.
