The Lost Art of Listening to Music

I don’t think it is entirely inaccurate to say that we are living in a shuffle culture; we are a people that shuffles. When I use this word (to shuffle), I am not referring to a kind of movement. I don’t mean to conjure up images of a person shuffling along, walking down the street and dragging their feet on the ground. Such a use of the word ‘shuffle’ might be more applicable in my previous post on The Lost Art of Walking. In this post however, I am using shuffle in a very different sense (though there is certainly a connection between these two meanings of the word): ‘shuffle’ is an option we have the power to select when we listen to music.

Is listening to music an art that has been lost? Here I must distinguish between listening to music as an art, and music as an art in and of itself. Saying that to listen to music is an art implies two things. First, it implies that when we listen to music, we are not just passively receiving someone else’s art, but creating something ourselves through the process of listening. Secondly, it implies that there is more than one way of listening to music, and that perhaps some ways are better than others.

Music as a lost art is a very broad topic, and there are a number of angles I could take with it, a number of interesting issues which I could discuss. For example, classical music is an art that has been lost in that it is frequently misunderstood or relegated to easy background listening, thus overlooking its complexity and rich beauty. Music as a shared experience and not an isolating, individualistic pursuit is also a shift resulting in a loss. Yet in this particular post, the direction I want to take has to do with, as I mentioned above, listening to music, and what’s more, with our overwhelming urge to press ‘shuffle.’

In my own personal listening, I am often tempted to shuffle. There are two questions I want to ask here, questions that I have and continue to ask myself: what is so appealing about shuffling music, and why might this tendency be negative?

The first question, I think, is wrapped up in the prominence of technology, and the convenience and instant gratification it provides. The easier and quicker it becomes to find and obtain the things we want- be it a fact, a recipe, a movie or a song- the more we think it is normal and expected that such things should come easily and quickly. As this trend continues, we develop an aversion to waiting, an aversion to things that are perhaps more difficult and slow. And so, we might shuffle because this makes it easier to get to the next best thing– the next best song- and it encourages us to skip until we find the thing we want. It separates albums into separate songs- separate parts- so that we can isolate and quickly enjoy the part that provides us with the most pleasure.

The other factor, for me, has to do with feelings. I am always over analyzing my feelings, and with music it is no different. When we have a whole ocean of music at our instant disposal, we may find ourselves overwhelmed. What do we feel like listening to? Such a vast array of choice may not necessarily be the wholehearted ‘good’ which it poses to be. There is almost a pressure in this sort of situation to assess one’s mood and decide on the perfect music for the moment. To help address this problem, we can simply click ‘shuffle’ and keep skipping until we find the right match for our mood. But sometimes we reject one song after another in an endless search for something better.

What do we feel like? In trying to pinpoint the exact mood we are in and thus achieve some kind of precision, we allow ourselves to be ruled first and foremost by feelings. We decide our interests and the habits that form (in part) our character based on what feels good and what feels familiar. But feelings never tell even near the full story. They are sorely limited, and if we use them as sole direction in music or in anything else, we will only ever turn to the things that are easy or pleasurable and we will miss many of the best things in art and in life. Music with the widest entry point may seem more inviting, and yet it is often music with a steep and arduous climb to the summit that can move us most and enrich our lives, that can teach us and make us more human, more instilled with compassion, more open to beauty, rather than just make us feel good.

There is a wholeness to an album that is missed by the avid shuffler. Music, as art, has the potential to form a story or a narrative: not some fragment floating free of context, but a thread attached to other interwoven threads, with thoughts that follow and precede and enrich one another. May we never accept music merely because it shouts at us in dulcet tones and tells us with exactness what it is all about. May we never spurn music because it speaks in a whisper, or not at all. Without words (yes, even then), it has something to say. And implicit (rather than explicit) meaning only means that it is not external to your self and so can belong to you, can really be yours, for it calls that you make something of it, and pour self into art to create from an already created creation something far greater.

Listening to music could be about more than feelings, about more than ease and convenience, or the pleasure of a catchy tune. Listening to music could be an exercise in patience, in learning to like something that does not immediately grab our attention, in really listening and contemplating, rather than dismissing in those first few quavering seconds. If listening to music is truly an art, then it does not have to be a merely mindless activity. Rather than only taking and receiving through it, we could give; we could create as well. And from this creation we might walk a little taller and be lifted up a little higher, instead of just shuffling along.