When I think of music, I think of proficiency, not the playing kind, but the familiarity kind. I always feel deficient in this area.
When I was young, the story goes, the Chinese herbalist my mom frequented recommended she play classical music for my stressed little spirit. I grew up to CBC radio 2 and still find it the most comforting of background soundtracks.
In her memoir, Joyce Carol Oates writes: “‘Do you listen to music while you write?’ This curious question is often asked of writers. The more attentive you are to music, the more distracted you are by hearing music while you try to work. For music is an exquisite art, not white noise. It must be a fairly modern custom to ubiquitously pipe-in music in public places. When did this custom begin? And how will it end? Can it end? There is something offensive in having to listen to music, particularly serious music, as if it were but background noise, or a film score. For music exists in and of itself and not as an accompaniment to anything else. Music is the supreme solace because it is so much more; it is the spiritual counterpoint to the world’s cacophony, essential as a heartbeat.”
Sam Anderson in the acknowledgements section of Boom Town thanked the Sunbathers whose album he listened to on a loop. I don't know why I was expecting something calming, for 30 seconds in, I felt like I was being audibly hosed in a jet of cold water.
Then again, sometimes a hypnotic beat is comforting. It was on a cold October evening when we squeezed into a car to make our way to a funeral. Emotions were loose and the only thing holding tightly together was the beat from Deadmaus.
When I need to get through writing, sure, I play music and my taste is of the romantic and emotional kind: Bach, Chopin, movie soundtracks. But I prefer to do creative writing in silence, like Oates, sitting in the garage, feeling thoughts as though they hover in a liminal space. I’ll profess that there is a purity to silence that music interferes.
As I was saying, my musical repertoire was limited. It still is limited. I have to remind myself to listen to new music, to expand my catalogue of soundwaves. I associate proficiency with the ability to pick an album to suit a mood. I am far from that which is why I must listen as an exercise. Often I am surprised by how enjoyable it is to listen in the way Oates describes, taking any album and treating it seriously.