Late this past year, my partner and I went to our local Alamo Drafthouse, ordered our cocktails and dinners, and sat back and watched Stop Making Sense on the big screen. It was part of A24’s restoration of the Jonathan Demme-directed concert film, and seeing the movie theatrically was an immersive experience — even without 3D or an IMAX screen to add to the event. And when the movie finished, the audience applauded as though they had just been to see a real concert — as though David Byrne and company could hear us responding to their music from 40 years and a continent away.
And as we got back in our car to drive home, Bri turned and asked me the question I’ve been thinking about ever since: “How long has it been since you sat down and listened to music just to listen to it?“
Of course, we’re surrounded by music. I’m constantly buying music from Bandcamp to help support the artists, as well as subscribing to two music streaming services at the same time because… um… I really don’t know why, but I do. I’ve even released some of my own music, both the kind you make with a guitar and a microphone and the kind you make staring at a computer screen. It’s not like our lives have been devoid of music.
But — completely unintentionally — we had fallen into a habit where music was either the background hum of our day-to-day lives, or just a little reward for doing the things we all have to do. You either put on some music in the background while you’re working, cooking, driving — or you put it on while running those chores to help encourage you to actually do them. But the music, itself, is so rarely at the center of things.
The exception to this rule has really become concert movies and video albums — and even then, probably only the ones we see in cinemas. We watched Beyonce’s Black is King when it came out, but given that we streamed it from Disney+, the stirring visuals and striking musical compositions were accompanied by whatever we were doing with our handheld devices at the same time.
As this new year dawned, Bri bought us tickets to a live concert — the first we’ve been to together in years. We went to see David Wax Museum at the Studio Barn. Or, rather, we went to hear David Wax Museum. Because not once during the entire live show did I see anybody playing anything. Not once did I see anybody singing. We took our seats among the carefully arranged chairs and, on our own time before the performance began, took the blindfolds that had been provided and put them on. The instruments and the singers all wandered freely through the space, in between widely-spaced rows of chairs. Some times they were right over my shoulder. Some times they were all the way across the room. But from beginning to end, all I had to do — all I could do — was sit still and listen and experience.
And once again I was struck by the power of just listening to music. The sheer weight of allowing the music to be the sole reason for the moment. Not an assignment with a looming deadline that just also happened to be accompanied by the latest album I pulled off of Bandcamp, or a long enough drive that I burned my way through all of the latest episodes of Oh No, Ross and Carrie! and wound up digging into my currently downloaded music. There is a life to music that can be forgotten when you allow it to become purely background, but it all comes roaring back the moment you take your mind off of everything else and. just. listen.
Late last year I heard Grant Green’s “Idle Moments” for the first time. I’d turned it on to listen to while working and pretty quickly realized that working with that on would be impossible, and also I would just have to sit still and listen to the whole 15-minute track. Occasionally I get songs that hit me like that, but it’s been a very long time since I listened to an album like that.