Believe me, I’ve tried. I took a year of piano lessons but just couldn’t get it. I married a musician. I tried to learn guitar. (I would still play with it, but I broke a string last time I tried to tune it and who has time to get to a music store where it can be restrung?) I can’t sing—I’ve never been trained and I just don’t seem to have the voice for it. (In fact, since I no longer teach those close to me say I speak so softly that it’s a strain to hear me.) But the fact is I love music. That’s why I don’t listen to it as background. If there’s music playing, that I like, I find it difficult to concentrate on anything else. It goes directly to my brain, it seems.
My memory is such that if a piece of music is too familiar I sometimes just don’t want to hear it. I’m also out of touch with contemporary music. I have strong tastes, and not too much appeals to me. When something does, it’s transcendent. It’s like I’ve fused with the performers. It’s mystical and amazing. Growing up, we couldn’t afford much in the way of records. (I’m sure I need not say anything about cassette or 8-track tapes.) I listened to the radio with my brothers from time to time, and enjoyed what we heard. I secretly enjoyed what I heard coming from my older brother’s room. Left to my own devices, however, I tend to pick up a book and I can’t listen to music and read at the same time. I know that this is my own neurological issue, but I’m letting you in because anything transcendent is worth sharing.
Although the quality isn’t as good, services such as Spotify and Amazon Music Unlimited have slowly introduced me to music of the nineties and later. Why the nineties? That’s when I began teaching and my spare time was spent researching (reading) and I had little time for other diversions. You see, music may just be what it’s all about. It’s being absorbed and enjoying every second of it. Humans are visually oriented, but when we focus on sounds something happens to us. I can be in a crowded store and stop dead right in the middle of the aisle if one of my special songs comes on in the background. I have to stand and listen, shopping forgotten. Transcendent moments are few. If we were in transport all the time I fear it would become ordinary. And such things are worth pondering on Groundhog Day.
