Music

I don't listen to podcasts.

I want to be a podcaster. Really and truly, I do. There are tons of podcasts which I do enjoy listening to, from Savage Love to the Infinite Monkey Cage to This American Life.  I click through websites and think "Huh, that's interesting" or "I've always wanted to know more about that" or "I'm driving through Wisconsin, I'll need something to occupy my mind."

I download SO many podcasts.

***

Before I go any further I need to make a confession. 

There's a mixtape that goes with this blog post. 

Rather, there's a playlist on Spotify, the paltry 21st Century version of the mixtape (it's under my name, cleverly called "Mixtape.") There's a folder in Dropbox. An actual playlist for this post is a thing that exists. And while listening to it while reading this post certainly isn't mandatory I'd suggest that you do, dear reader. 

Because when I was thinking about this post and about music and what I was going to say, I thought about the songs I wanted you to hear. 

Yes, you.

Because I have something I want to tell you. Maybe it's "This is the sound of settling." It could be "Help, I'm alive." It's possible that it's "You ain't a beauty, but yeah, you're all right."  Regardless of what it is precisely, there's something I want to say to you.

And because no one has tape players anymore, I did the best I could. 

Got it queued up? 

Good.

***

That isn't a photo of my high school year book.

Those are the inside covers of my high school/early college journal.

Almost without exception those are song lyrics. There are a few quotes from things I read that stuck with me during my adolescence (looking back, ohmygod how insufferable was I? What seventeen year old reads Lolita?), but 90% of them are song lyrics. The back covers look the same. It is intentionally blurry because I had some extraordinarily embarrassing taste in music in high school (I suppose, so does everyone, but it's really pretty emo in there). 

And in case you're thinking "Oh, Kel, who cares. Everyone was like that in high school." Here's one from my most recent journal. 

Those lyrics in my high school journal, the lyrics that still make it into my current journals, are as much about the music (which I can hear in my head immediately when I read the lyrics) as about the lyrics. Sure, an over-wrought, desperately in need of therapy, sixteen year old version of me found a lot of comfort in The Smiths lyrics, but she also simply loved the music because it expressed something she couldn't figure out how to talk about herself. 

Unoriginal? Absolutely. Still true?

Hell yes.  

***

You know that John Waters quote? The one about books? 

Of course you do. Everyone does.

I feel that way about music. 

Let me back up. 

I listen to music more than I do anything else during the course of the week. 

I'm serious. There are 10,080 minutes in a week. I spend (on average) 2,700 of those minutes asleep (too few), 3,000 at work (too many), 600 reading, 450 commuting, and 210-300 working out. 

I spend a minimum of 5,000 minutes a week listening to music. 

I fall asleep to jazz. My alarm is The Current. I commute to 60s Motown. When I'm stuck on a project at work I crank The Rolling Stones.  My Spotify profile has mixes as varied as "Angry Girl Music" to "California Dreamin'" to "Banjos!" I cried when I found out Pete Seeger died this week. 

Music was a huge part of my upbringing. My parents love live shows, regardless of whether it's the Lake Wobegon band or blues in Arkansas or jazz in Chicago. My brothers and I own terabytes of music and are constantly asking one another "Have you heard the new Steeldrivers album?" "Do you like Alice Coltrane or do you really prefer John?" "What was the last show you saw live?" The worst thing any of us can say about a city we've lived in or traveled to was "The music scene sucked."

A little snobby and short-sighted? Absolutely. But as a result, I'm conversant in everything from punk to 60s Motown to the differences between Dixieland and Bop. 

It's a trade-off I'm willing to make. 

***

I download podcasts with the best possible intentions. 

To put it in the dorkiest way imaginable, I always want to be learning something. In my constant quest to be Kelly 2.0, I want very little time that is not actively devoted to making myself a better person in some capacity. Podcasts always seem like an excellent way to multitask, an opportunity to clean the kitchen and learn something about theoretical physics. 

I try to listen to them. I really do. And I can get into them for a day or a week or a couple months. But inevitably while listening to one I'll get distracted by something a host or a guest says. I'll think of how  a joke reminds me of an ex and I'll start humming Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart." I'll hear a story of how friendship changes you and I'll remember how two people I adore learned "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver for my birthday and forever changed the song's meaning for me. Without thinking about it I'll shut off whatever podcast I've turned on and open up whatever music app is closest at hand. 

Because the truth is that regardless of whatever smart things Ira Glass and Brian Cox are saying, they don't get me in quite the same way as hearing Paul McCartney sing "Blackbird." And as much as I'd like to believe that I'm a radically different person at 29 than I was at 16 (someone who cares more about facts than feelings), the truth is that I still have feelings I don't know how to express. I haven't quite figured out how to say "I love you" or "I miss you" without a mixtape. And while I want to understand theoretical physics and gun violence in inner-city schools, a bigger part of me wants to sort out how to talk to people about the feeling I have for them.

Koo-koo-ka-choo.