This Moment: Organizing my vinyl after many years of neglect, I spent some time listening to songs that I have had some intensly personal connection with over the years. Not surprisingly, some still had that spark when I put them on the turntable, others did not. While working through a pile of records I had pulled out, I started to think about the nature of this process. Well past my teenage years, I still swoon and get carried away by tunes that speak to and with me. Transcendance is possible at any age, and certain songs retain or develop that power to define the moment you are experiencing. And I experience a slight feeling of loss when I recognize a song I used to have a relationship with no longer retains any special appeal.
At some point I started thinking about Dunbar's Number, which is the theoretical size (about 150 I think) of a group in which each person knows everybody that anybody else knows. It is a kind of built-in limit required by a self-contained community.
So this is the music question - Is there a natural limit to the number of songs that you can be in an active relationship with? At some point do certain older song-relationships get pushed out because you simply don't have the room, energy, or time needed to maintain those relationships while tending to newer song-relationships?
My current examples of such song-relationships -
Song I'm still madly in love with after all these years - Yes I Do (by the Psychedelic Furs)
Special new song in my life: Saints (by Army/Navy)
Old song that has lost that loving feeling: Androgynous (by the Replacements)
Will something else get pushed out when I get a new song crush? Does that happen to you?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I didn't think much about this until I rented a car recently that had satellite radio. Did you know there is a channel just for the Grateful Dead? And right next to it one just for Bruce Springsteen? I can understand the Dead, but how is an all Springsteen channel profitable?
ReplyDeleteAnyway I heard a song on the Bruce channel that I hadn't heard since 1986 (Bobby Jean from Born in the USA) . It made me kind of sad that, though I still think the song is beautiful, it was only in a nostalgic way, and not a current one. In fact, if I could hear the song all the time, I'd probably get tired of it.
I don't know why I'd admit it publicly, but I still love disco and can sometimes be found you-tubing the bee gees. I know it sucked in the '70's but it's good now.
The '80's I you-tube is New Order, the Cure and Erasure. Still love them. Though the new Cure sucks about as bad as the new Depeche Mode.
"New" stuff I like is all throw back folk/roots stuff which doesn't really seem new, just new to me.
I think the "new to me" experience is essential, which is why I don't get down on younger people rockin t-shirts of bands from my own youth. It is not their fault they were born now, 20+ years after the Clash broke up (for example). In the same way, it is not my fault I was born 50 years after the calypso I'm getting into again. Neither one of us is late to the party - it is ongoing.
ReplyDeleteIt is, however, their fault if they like the Dead...
ha ha, we went to the Bob Dylan show in NJ Thursday. I was surprised by the number of college age looking people there. Why would they like Dylan? And not old (from the past) Dylan, they like the new (in fact quite old) Dylan. The Dylan I don't like.
ReplyDeleteA young couple--lots of piercings, tattoos etc--were wearing Willie Nelson t-shirts which I thought was a little odd, but they could be potheads. Turns out they got soaked in the rain and bought the tshirts to be warm!