I'm not really into music

I’m not really into music.

This appears to be heresy to a lot of people. I am more likely to seek peace rather than the noise that I find music brings. In my life, I have found that unwanted sound drains me. From memory I followed the typical teenage path of sitting on bed, radio blaring alongside whilst scribbling out my homework .It was what I was supposed to do as a teenager. Only problem was that I found music very distracting. I still find music very distracting. I’m a simple person and can really only concentrate on one task at a time. Science is now backing me up on this, showing that we don’t really multi-task but our brains rapidly switch between activities.

 On occasion I’ve even gone as far as to describe myself as ‘musically dyslexic’. I have no knowledge of its vocabulary. I don’t recognise its constituent parts nor do I have any sense of the rules that help make these parts come together. I played recorder at Primary school. In grade 5, I recall my teacher, Mr Douglas, initiated a class sing-a-long to tunes streaming across the whole school via the loud speakers. I undertook the mandatory courses in secondary school but then dropped them as soon as they became elective. The idea of creating music astounds me. People who can do this are magical.

My two daughters can both play musical instruments and hold conversations between themselves about it that I can’t understand let alone partake in. I’ve attended many, many of their concerts and recitals over the years. They attend a school which offers many musical activities and the cool kids are the band’s percussionists. I just don’t enjoy it. It took me quite some years to fully accept that this doesn’t make me a bad person. I just don’t enjoy it and would rather be sitting in my car reading. These sentiments are best not shared amongst the other school parents. I did that once and the look of horror on her face as I admitted that is one that I shan’t easily forget. Secretly I think it was my audacity to voice what she deep down she may have felt herself at some point.

There’s even some music which actively gives me a headache. Surges in the soundtrack levels of a movie force me to cover my ears. I avoid videos on social media and when I do watch them I do so without sound. . The ‘doof doof’ of a persistent base is enough to make me reach for the off switch. My daughters are well trained in this. When on the odd occasion I’ve let them loose on the radio music choices, they know that if I get my hands on the radio it gets turned off so they change stations before I get the chance.

I’m not anti-music. I have a few friends who are musicians and I think they create awesome music. In fact, I’ve attended some pretty cool gigs and enjoyed the whole experience. The stage lights and the dark recesses, the people watching, the tasty beverages from the bar and the showmanship of the performers are a stimulating spectacular. I just wouldn’t want to do it every week. I even dated musicians and a sound engineer but unsurprisingly not for very long.

I will just point out for the record that I do like music when I have people over for dinner. It adds to the soundtrack of a dinner or a party. It fills in the gaps, provides a pleasant background and generally adds to the overall ambience of sitting around the table sharing food with those you care about. Not all music is suitable though. I have a few favourites and if I was more computer literate I’d know how to easily make various playlists on Google play for just such situations. I’m impatient and find the whole Google Play thing too slow. It’s much quicker for me to select a few CDs to insert into the multi stack CD player. Only problem with that is that I decluttered all my CDs after checking that the music was available on our streaming service. By decluttered, I do mean threw out. I agree that streaming is certainly the way most people will get their music, visual entertainment and even reading matter into the future. It’s just up to me to spend some time figuring out how it all works and learning the shortcuts to make it all happen quicker. I’m impatient; I recognise that.

So I’ve decluttered a large part of my music sources from my life and I’ve yet to really get a handle on music streaming  to make it quickly accessible to my impatient self, but it doesn’t really bother me because , as I’ve said, I’m not really into music.

All artworks my own.