In the last few months I’ve been listening to a lot less music that I have probably in the last ten years. At least half the week or more I go home and I don’t turn anything on. It’s been quite a change. There’s something of a ratrace that I (personally) find to be a detriment to the Gnosis system, the idea that musical tastes become driven by the system rather than vice versa. Listening to lots of different things just numbs my appreciation over time, or at least makes me be able to appreciate almost any aesthetics from an objective standpoint. So this change in pattern has been a long time coming.
I spent a good week or two after changing my patterns, listening to Chicago’s At Carnegie Hall. Several times. There’s something about songs like “Listen,” “Introduction” and “Beginnings” that I find pretty uplifting, in fact Chicago’s lyrics, while at times awfully dated, can often get right to the point. No epic voyages to magical lands. No secret messages of enlightement as masquerade.
It’s kind of weird looking through your music collection and not feeling much of an affinity for anything. It’s an awful lot like trying to find something to listen to in shelves of 8s and 9s. A little Maudlin of the Well here, a bit of Dead, a little Kingston Wall and the occasional jazz stint. Still on holding pattern.Â