If there was ever a time that music helped you through some bumps in the road, or made you feel exhilarated and joyful during the best days, then you know how powerful music can be. This might bring back memories of chunky headphones blasting music over your ears, while you laid in bed after the rest of your family had gone to sleep. For many of us, as we grew older, it became harder and harder for us to make time for music—unless we were putting it on the background while we did other things, even though music had been such an important part of our lives before. For an idea to help you prioritize enjoying music again, here’s Day 11 of our 12 Days of Disconnection.
When was the last time you listened to an album or a podcast all the way through, without doing anything else—not on your commute, not in the background while you worked or cooked—but just sat down and listened? For many of us it has probably been quite a while. With all kinds of pressure to be productive each day, it can be hard to imagine sitting and listening to an album in full when your to-do list is nearly a foot long. But if you tuck the to-do list away, sit down and turn the music on, you might find a sense of peace that you haven’t felt in a long time.
Disconnect from everything else but the music. Pick your album, close your eyes, and just experience the way that different sounds and words feel in your body.
While a musical artist spends hours and weeks putting an album together, arranging and rearranging the order of the songs in their album, we might only listen to a few of those songs, or we might not listen to any of them in a specific order. If you set aside time to listen to an album all the way through, you’re able to get a full picture of the work that the artist created, so you might be able to gain more insights into their music and lyrics. And this is the way that an album is meant to be experienced—in its entirety, as one cohesive collection of songs.
Setting aside time to listen to the music—and only the music—could turn into something that feels like meditation. You’ll spend an hour or two in the world and mind of the artist, and then step back into the rest of your day with a new perspective, and hopefully some inspiration to make more time to be off in your daily or weekly routine.
Looking for some new playlists to listen to? Check out our playlists on Spotify created by our Artist Fellows and some members of the Getaway team.