Today as I sat leaned forward over my synthesizer, it’s lights dark, I listened. Not to my own music. To a favorite album I haven’t heard in a while, brought to mind by a friend’s music. And I realized something.
I haven’t been listening to music.
Weeks ago when I was still deep in my own musical process, I was listening to a lot of music. My own. It was filling me with this reflexive energy. Inspired by my own sounds to create more sounds to inspire me. I was enough. I didn’t feel a desire to listen otherwise.
In the last few weeks since finishing the body of work that is crystallizing into my first album, I’ve been feeling increasing guilt about not making music. Part of making art is about putting yourself in the chair and turning the thing on and letting what comes come. But part of it is also feeding yourself the creative nourishment that there is something to come out.
So today I listened. I lost myself in the shifting tapestries of someone else’s mind. Soft pinging drops condensing on screens. Nails tapping in delayed stereo. Machine rain. Synthesized dawn in the misty darkness of washed up 4am wandering. Swirling delicately in space, an architecture for the blind.
And I felt a stirring that I haven’t felt in a few weeks. Inspiration.