iPurgatory

Lately I have been utterly overwhelmed by the vastness that has become my music collection. And, thanks to a certain roommate who has music o' plenty as well, it is ever-growing. To add to that, Pitchfork Media reviews thousands of new albums and I read one every day. When I'm interested, I (illegally) download it and give it a shot. I'd say, on average, I acquire two new albums every week.

This is the biggest problem with our generation and the digital music era for me: over-access (similar to and also resulting in over-excess). We all suffer from this deep-seated boredom that results from overstimulation which has, in turn, resulted from our infinite and immediate access to information and entertainment and virtually (and digitally) anything else we could want to get our hands on. My iTunes has over 16 days of music in it. SIXTEEN DAYS. I could let my music play continuously in my room for 2 weeks and I still wouldn't have gotten through my entire library of music. So, simply from a time perspective, there is no way that I have listened to or will ever listen to all of the music that I own at this point (or next week when I get two more albums).

The task of handling my music becomes even more daunting when one considers that out of approximately 30 gigabytes of music, I can only fit a measly 18+ on my iPod. That means that every time I get one of these new and mysterious Pitchfork-recommended albums, I have to remove one from my iPod in order to give it listening time. And, with my current rate of turnover, I am removing two albums from my iPod every week! How am I supposed to get a solid rotation of music into my life when my library is constantly shifting and my choices are being ceaselessly upended?

The answer is a simple one: Get a smaller iPod. Or...Get a bigger iPod. Or...carry "Compact Discs" around with a "Walkman" in order to limit my listening capacity to one album at a time. But that isn't the point...the point is this:

Like never before, I find myself unable to answer the question "What type of music do you listen to?" At one point I had developed the witty response of, "Anything that I can hear more than once and still feel like I'm listening for the first time." That's a great answer. The problem is, nowadays, with my 4,000 or so songs, oftentimes I am listening to songs for the first time. So now, my answer is something like "Oh, you know...everything." Or, even better, just a simple "Radiohead." Is that what I've become? A one-band man? I mean, we all know I love Radiohead an uncomfortable amount, but I wouldn't dream of saying that it's the only thing I listen to or the way I define my musical tastes. One time, I even had the audacity to say "John Mayer," as if that would either a) make me look cool b) encompass the types of music that I like or c) make me feel good about the fact that I answered "John Mayer" to the question "What type of music do you like?". And I guess that's the problem...I listen to a ton of music -- hours every day -- but I don't listen to a whole lot of anything in particular anymore. What used to make me such an educated listener, namely my eclectic taste and my open mind, are exactly the same aspects of my music-listening-self that have led me to the music purgatory in which I currently reside and suffer.

I used to go through "phases" of listening. You know the type...from sophomore year of high school until sophomore year of college I had my Dave Matthew Band phase. From the earliest age possible until now I have been in both my Billy Joel and Beatles phases. When I first started downloading music and expanding my ever-eclectic collection, phases were still an option. Bright Eyes was one of the first and last phases to start in the digital age (for me, at least), and it's one that I'm not entirely out of yet. But I haven't had a new phase since Bright Eyes, and that was just after the DMB phase ended three years ago.

Over the past few days I've resolved to at least stop shuffling the 3,500 songs that can fit onto my iPod. After all, we know how unreliable the "shuffle" feature can actually be. I only have 10 Madonna songs out of over THREE THOUSAND and somehow, miraculously by chance, the iPod manages to play three in a row on shuffle?! Yeah, that's fair. Now, you might ask, "Why keep Madonna on your iPod or even in your iTunes if you have such disdain for her existence?" And to that I have no good answer, but one that perfectly explains why I got into this predicament in the first place. It is simply a compulsion of mine to collect music and not get rid of it under most conceivable circumstances given the fact that I have over 120 Gigs of available space on my computer.

So, in an effort to rectify my iPod's secret agenda to play only the songs that it somehow knows I am not willing to listen to that I keep on my iPod for no reason anyway, I have ceased shuffling and taken up the task of choosing my own music. I am only on Day 2 of this experiment, but so far I seem to be doing well(ish). Yesterday on the way to work I tried (upon a Pitchfork recommendation) "Heretic Pride" by The Mountain Goats (2008). I enjoyed every song, though it was boring at times. After work I went with the lighthearted 2004 album "Twentysomething" by Jamie Cullum, and today I tried a new one (from Pitchfork, of course): "Boxer" by The National. So far so good.

It's still a struggle, though, every time I go to that vast and intimidating "Artists" list and scroll through the masses. And each trip through Artistsland means a subsequent trip through Albumsland, and inevitably leaves me trapped in the musical wasteland that is my own, personal, iPurgatory.