Quiet within the Noise
The other day I did something I haven’t done in a long time: I listened to an album, nearly uninterrupted, from start to finish. It was an album that I’ve heard a few individual songs off of before, but I’ve never listened to 85% of it. And once the album wrapped, it made me realize that with everything so tailored to quick two minute bursts these days, listening to a nearly 48 minute album felt like some type of major commitment.
When I was younger, I loved The Beatles brand of 60s pop music because the songs could paint a robust picture in just 2 minutes. The song would begin and end, with nary a wasted moment and no room to stretch. It was tight, compact, and to the point. The song Yesterday clocks in at just 2:03 and goes through an entire emotional and sonic landscape.
I’m beginning to realize as I get older that these days, everything is packaged to not only be as disposable as possible, but to be as quick and fleeting as possible. It’s like we took this 60’s pop song model and put it into overdrive. Now granted, I still see virtue in brevity. But let’s be honest with ourselves, has condensing everything into the smallest sound bite possible done a lot of positive things for us as a species? It has increased human productivity. It has increased accessibly to information. It has democratized a lot of parts of human life. But the productivity curve seems to have hit a peak and is rapidly reducing because I would argue, we’ve devalued everything else and don’t have the attention span to process longer, meaningful pieces of art and life.
I see the emphasis on fleeting brevity in so many aspects of my day to day. At work, I help put on festivals and the day the music ends and everything wraps, I’m mentally already onto the next major project not even an hour later. So much of life is this way. We don’t take time for much of anything these days if it isn’t quick- and that’s not even considering time to actually process and reflect on things that have already passed. I feel unease if I’m not working on endless projects all at once. And I know I’m not alone here.
So the thing I’m beginning to find interesting again as of a few months ago is the privilege of letting my mind wander. Of taking some time here and there to let it happen.
I think back to late nights as a teenager, the rest of my family asleep in our house, putting on prog rock type albums on the stereo with headphones and letting my mind wander for a bit. I didn’t do drugs at the time, but it was the closest I could get to that state, where time kind of blended into one big thing. Where 12 minute pronouncements felt equally compelling and valuable as 2 minute bursts, both were just telling different types of stories. Some stories need to be told in longer fashion.
I’ve loved living in a big city like Los Angeles for the past bunch of years, but I’m realizing that at some point in the future, I will crave the quiet stillness of the country, the feeling of days stretching into infinity, and quite simply, the boredom that comes with being in a place that moves more in accordance with the natural timeline and arc of the universe. It might be a reflection of our current political state that everything feels like it’s just 24 hour news. It’s hard to see growth in a plant if you watch it 24 hours a day. The spaces in between allow for stretching out and becoming something new. It’s hard to even see the long term trends when the microscope is focused in on the highest magnification level at all times of day, endlessly.
So as I move onto the next stage of adulthood, it becomes clear that to continue growth, it’s time to head back to longer forms of art, more moments of quiet contemplation, and spending less time on things like social media that have no real long term value. As a father who wants to be a role model to his children and their developing minds, I feel ready to return to thinking about things on all ends of the scale, not just the quick, nonstop bursts we see daily.