I need something new to listen to, and I need it now. But for some reason the latest CDs I have bought are not casting the right spell, and all the old albums I return to out of desperation sound worn and weary to my ears. We all have these little phases. Maybe there’s something in the air. (Call out the instigator, because there’s something in the air.) Maybe love is in the air. (Everywhere I look around. Love is in the air, every sight and every sound.) At least I am not walking in the air.
This is getting serious.
(I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord.)
What if you realised, one day, that there simply wasn’t any more music that the mind can take? What if you reached saturation point? I worry about this. For 35 years now, a small part of my brain has been dedicated to a single thought: what record shall I play next? Like you, I have far, far too many records. I will buy one on the smallest whim, and I will dispose of one with the greatest reluctance. It almost needs to be toxic before it goes to the charity shop, to sit with all those Lightning Seeds and Travis and Leona Lewis CDs people can no longer bear to have in their houses.
But however much music we have, it never seems to be enough. We go on buying records and CDs, and downloading tracks legally or illegally, and listening to streaming services on the internet and strange radio stations from god knows where, all in the hope of hearing the next killer song that will change our lives. I am one of these people, and I know many others.
Many years ago my friend G announced that he had 100 albums and really saw no need for any more. Every time he bought a new one, he said, he would get rid of an old one. I reminded him of this the other day, in the room he has set aside for the vinyl he never plays. (The CDs are split between two other rooms.) He denied ever saying or even thinking such a thing. He is wise to disown the foolish pronouncements of youth, although probably less wise to stay friends with people who remember him making them. I assured him his secret was safe with me.
But what if, one day, it just goes, and you don’t want to listen to any of it any more? It would be like establishing, definitively, that chewing gum does lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight. You would look at your CD collection and think, why do I need any of this? You would imagine the adventures you could have had and the houses you could have bought, had you not given all your money to Mr Our Price and the shady HMV family. And you would weep long, bitter tears of fortunes misspent and opportunities missed. As a man in his middle years, I obviously weep these tears anyway, but this would have been even worse.
Extreme measures have to be taken. A loss like this cannot be allowed to happen. There is only one thing to do: complete renunciation. No music, of any description, for as long as I can hold out. No CDs while I work. No radio while I wash up. No iPod on train journeys. No pubs with jukeboxes. I contemplate giving up music for Lent, but that’s an awfully long time. Music isn’t alcohol. (Not that I could give that up either.)
It’s difficult. The silence becomes oppressive. I listen out for pop tunes I don’t like on TV ads and in shops I am walking past. I sleep badly. I snap at the children. I last four days. I put on David Byrne and Brian Eno’s collaboration from a couple of years ago, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. I didn’t much like it at the time, but suddenly it sounds fresh and alive and full of intriguing musical ideas. It’s wonderfully not-silent. John Cage’s 4’33” has its moments, but you wouldn’t want it played on an indefinite loop.
There is nothing, of course, of the smallest consequence to be learned from this, other than that middle age does your head in. And we already know that. Silence will save you a lot of money in CDs unbought, but for some of us it is anything other than golden.
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