The how (and why) of listening.

I've worn out all of your records
I've torn out page after page
I have lain with the shadows you threw
When you danced with the bright colored lights of the stage.
 

'Namesake' - Anaïs Mitchell

I had a normal child's curiosity for music- the Sports cassette then CD Walkman, the contemporary Christian pop and rock that I was raised with, the occasional curious sneaking of 90's and early 2000's pop hits on the family stereo. I consumed music like most kids, it was ear candy and I was drawn to the leisure easiness of it. I was in piano lessons much of elementary school, resting pretty comfortably on any laurels of success that my musical ear brought me. My musical world was small but felt big enough to me- yet I had still not experienced the meaning I've found now.

The fire grew, as it seemingly did for many, with the onset of adolescence. Where I used to like, I now loved. The youth band needed a guitarist to play (and bask in the glory of) overdriven power chords! Frequent rock concerts! The lawlessness of public middle school! It all brought a torrent of new musical exposure (most of it, in hindsight, for a very specific time and place). Infatuating, but still not deeply meaningful.

At least I was regularly consuming music. By middle school I was obsessively toting my Walkman and a comically large CD binder to school every day. Bus no. 13 would rattle me home the same leisurely pace every weekday from a quarter past three or so until four. The reassuring smell of diesel fumes and worn, warm vinyl seats enveloped me as I would listen to something forgettable (now, in hindsight). 

By early high-school, I was listening even more and had played guitar enough to make noises reminiscent of music. I went through a few Walkmans, a few CD binders, and many sets of headphones. My penchant for the heavier sounds grew and I was in every musical sense of the word a hooligan (this I believe is a path many boys have to follow all the way to the end, bear with us). Around this time for some reason (maybe that my musical world had opened up enough, that I was a first-world teenager experiencing all the feelings, of that that I was buying, seeing, and hearing new music more than ever), I started to sense a deeper quality to the occasional song. It wasn't just super catchy, or super heavy, or super angsty, it was sometimes meaningful that made me discover new parts of my own self.

The listening I was doing, in those moments, began to feel more sacred. You start to build a relationship with certain albums and songs. A few albums I would listen daily, in their entirety (often looking out a dirty, double-paned bus window). It became something to be experienced, feeling like even a duty I was responsible to. Just as I had formed strong friendships in school that last to this day, I began to feel the same towards some of the music that I held closest. 

Music started to become bigger for me then, pointing to meaning and overarching concepts in my life. As I grew older, all kinds of music- well-known and obscure, ancient and modern, regardless of genre- started to come into my life. This continued through the rest of high school, college, and still today. All the memories I have in my life, especially from adolescence onward, have soundtracks to them. Music is woven through many of them, to the point of being inseparable in recollection or meaning.  

Before I consider myself an aspiring musician, player of an instrument, or conveyor of musical ideas, I first identify as a listener. I've always been a listener. There might not be a greater joy in life (to me at least, so far) as listening to and being affected by music. Now, I'm blessed by so many kinds and moments, from all corners of it. Stuff I'd never ever imagine enjoying, but with enough patience I've found the beauty in all of it.

When I graduated high school, I waited tables in town while figuring out my plans for college. I had four or five main friends in high school and a few left town after graduating. The others and I stuck around. On Fridays we had a pretty good routine of going out to eat somewhere and hanging out in our cars afterwards, which is what you do at that age in Oklahoma. I would get off earlier from working lunch and have a few hours to kill before they could meet me. I grew up out of town so driving home was not cheap or quick. This old unused boat ramp next to my town's often dried-up river (not too scenic at this particular bend) was tucked away at the very back of a park complex. I don't know why I found myself back there particularly but I often did. It was facing west so I'd catch a good amount of sunsets. I'd play guitar and write, but mainly just listen to music through my shut off sedan's CD deck, feeling cathartic and in good company with old friends that knew me as well as anyone could. Old songs, Country songs, Walk-down progressions, songs brimming with positivity, or flowing out of a horn. Songs with beautiful harmonies, pieces on unlikely instruments, giving a lyric to an indescribable feeling or sung in a whisper. It was already common practice for me for it to mean this much, but moments of tranquility like that would reiterate things- there would be no going back to listening to music the old way.