Blog Entry #6: A Month Without Music

I like to come up with random challenges that are relatively easy but go against what I usually do in my daily routine. Towards the end of January, I noticed I always had music playing in the background. It felt like I couldn't live in silence, even if it was just between walking from my car to the library to study. 

Whenever I recognize a dependency in my life, I consider why I have gravitated there and take it as a sign that I need to shake things up. Simultaneously, I have been wanting to stop paying for internet radios and go back to owning the audio files that I listen to so I can fill up my Zune and relearn exactly what type of music I want to listen to when I don't have every song in the universe to choose from. Since February was about to start, I decided to take the whole month off from music to see how it felt and how much of a difference it made to my day to allow silence back into my life.

The first few days weren't that bad; I would think of a song I wanted to hear and just go, "Oh ya, not doing that this month," and go back to what I was doing. As time went deeper into the month, I began getting reintroduced to the voice in my head. Hearing what I was thinking about at all times was one of my favorite parts of this challenge. I  love reflecting through journalling every day, but allowing myself to become introspective about the casual tasks I do throughout the day made this a gratifying experience.

As time got closer to the middle of the month and on, I noticed random songs I enjoy would just start playing in my head with extreme clarity. The reason I'm going with why this was happening was when I felt some type of emotion, my brain was connecting that exact feeling to a song that stamped itself on that exact same emotional response.

You can only wholly escape music if you walk around with earplugs, so I still heard them when I'd go to the gym and random coffee shops or restaurants. What was fascinating about this was how magical and purely sublime any song I heard (except house music) sounded. The pitch and harmony throughout songs I had heard before sounded like the best song I had ever heard, even if I didn't like it usually. 

When I was watching the movie The Iron Claw, the song "Tom Sawyer by Rush" came on (a song that I love), and it was like a jolt of lightning that was sent through my body. I couldn't help but dance and groove in the dark movie theatre chair.  Or it could be because this song just rules. Who knows.

This may be an extreme thing to do for seemingly no reason, but I'd encourage whoever is reading this to find something in their life that they can take a break from and see what happens. 

I think you'd be surprised at how your body and mind react.

Comments

  1. Aidan O.March 24, 2024 at 10:22 PM

    That's an interesting experiment, although I don't think it is one that I could repeat. I hadn't really thought how omnipresent music is in our society, but thinking about it it makes sense how you were unable to be totally music-free in public spaces.

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  2. Ashaer JMarch 24, 2024 at 11:37 PM

    This is something interesting. Like Aidan O. said, I'm not sure I could repeat it either. But, I have gone a day or a few without music and like you said you do become more appreciative of music when you do hear it after not listening to it for a while. Sometimes I try to go to the gym without listening to my own music.

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  3. Olivia V.March 29, 2024 at 12:35 AM

    Super interesting experiment, I could not handle the thoughts in my head as easily without music. I would say going a few days wouldn't be so bad as it can prevent spacing out and maybe even make some people more productive but overall this is such a hard challenge! There is so much music surrounding everything I do I wouldn't even know how to start without it. Music is practically everywhere!

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