Day 40: Music

I've been meaning to kick off some music recommendation posts on this for a while - but before I did, I wanted to make my stance on music very clear. So, here we are.

We love music, don't we? Everyone loves music. It's on your Facebook profile, it's on your CV. You've got an iPod, you go out dancing. You love music. Except, the thing is... i'm not sure you do.

It's not about listening to the radio, or keeping up with the charts. It's not even about filling your ears with it for every waking moment of the day.

It's not about knowing the names of the people in the band, or being able to reel off a string of trivia about their history. It's not about watching music videos.

It's not about owning the T-shirt, or the fact that you saw them live six years ago at T4-on-the-fucking beach.

Conversely, it's not about owning the rare 1993 EP, or being able to nail that awesome solo on guitar, or knowing all the lyrics to their critically acclaimed seminal album.

Loving music isn't about status, knowledge, or a good tune. Music can remind us of moments of our past, evoking forgotten emotions through this alone.

But there's more than that.

It's about being filled to the brim with an uncontrollable passion. It's about dancing down the elevators, and singing on the tube.

It's about the fire running through your veins. It's about needing to move - be this dancing, convulsing like a maniac, or just fucking sprinting down the road.

It's about letting the music take you. It's about being dragged away to another world, or dancing and singing on the London underground.

It's about looking around the room at a party to find the other grinning people who just clocked THAT bit of the song, because that bit, was fucking amazing.

It's about ascension. It's about becoming and invincible Deity, stomping, skulking, and strutting through your domain without a care in the world.

It can make you want to laugh, and it can make you want to cry. It can make you unimaginably happy. It can make you want to throw your body against a wall in the most brilliant way imaginable.

You'll either get this, or you won't. By this point you'll either be grinning, or you'll think I'm fucking insane. But I just wanted to get this out of the way so we're nice and clear, going forward.

I love music.

Lots.

Day 13: The Time on Sunday

I've become wonderfully accustomed to lazy Sundays of late - once you get into the right mindset (i.e. I am going to relish doing absolutely nothing of worth) they're pretty magic. I can take the time to soak up the details of the day, free from the intense feeling of agenda that buzzes around my head almost constantly. Distraction becomes a foreign concept. Cups of tea become wonderful. Most importantly of all, I can take the time to listen to music.

I listen to music all the time of course, but so much of the time I'm never really listening. I pump sound into my ears to wake me up in the morning, and keep me awake on the bus. Upbeat noise can help me nail through a tricky document at work. It's really convenient to pair up listening to music with other stuff, usually letting the other activity get more than it's fair share of the attention. But when you're able to take the time to envelop yourself in music, locking your mind away from the relentless white noise of reality - music can become utterly magic. I learnt this when I was about 18, when making the regular trip to my first girlfriend's house, a journey which was slightly shorter than The Mars Volta's first album - resulting in me hiding round the corner of her driveway until the most important part of the journey had come to it's conclusion.

Just over two years ago I was saving up money to move to London, working as a cleaner in the Tatton Park restaurant. Spending hours every night with only a mop for company, less than a handful of people were scattered within a mile radius of where I was.

It was this summer that I discovered Jarvis Cocker; spending hours alone in the middle of nowhere, my only company the utterly enchanting voice that whispered stories to me throughout the night. The most important of these to me will always be a song called The Wicker Man, a beautifully simple story that really only comes to life when given your undivided attention.

Brilliantly, Jarvis has just been given a two hour weekly show on 6 Music - his predisposition for narrative based songs the perfect compliment to a good cup of tea, and a grand addition to my Sunday manifesto.

I promise I will not tidy my room, or think about Monday. I will spend a substantial amount of time looking out of the window, and properly listen to the lyrics of 'The Gift' by The Velvet Underground.