I don’t usually listen to music when I’m trying to sleep, mostly because I find it difficult to not actively listen. At the same time, I absolutely cannot abide total silence. When I’m in my office, I always have earbuds in. When I’m at home or in my car, there is always something playing. And so, against all expert medical advice, I tend to sleep with the television on. (Not that anyone asked, but the TV show that helps me fall asleep is “30 Rock.”)
Paying attention or not paying attention to TV feels more like a choice to me than paying attention (or not) to music. In fact, I often come home from work at the end of the day, sit down on the couch, and “watch” television for a while just to unwind and re-center myself. Most times, I forget during the commercial breaks what it is that I am watching. I’ve explained it like this: I’m not really “watching” TV so much as the TV is just occupying my face while I sort out my thoughts from the day.
Those idiosyncrasies aside, I take it that what today’s prompt is looking for is a song that is relaxing, de-stressing, capable of easing and soothing and maybe even lulling. And I know just the song for that.
My pick today is Lucinda Williams‘ “Blue” from her 2001 album Essence. Here it is:
Go find a jukebox and see what a quarter will do. That’s not only one of the best lyrical lines ever, but pretty great life advice. So, instead of blathering on about how peaceful and soothing “Blue” is, I’m going to take that lyric as a point of departure for a rant.
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| Proof. |
First, an aside: several years ago I went to see a Lucinda Williams concert here in Memphis and, after the show was over, managed to talk myself onto her tour bus to hang out with her and her band. She was awesome, every bit as real and cool and warm as you would expect. She was also nice enough to contribute a photo for my American Values Project and talk her bandmates into doing the same. I still have the paper plate– they were eating post-concert pizza– on which Lucinda wrote “Peace, Love, Revolution” and autographed. That was a great night and made a total fangirl out of me.
And, now, the rant.
If you’ve been anywhere with a jukebox lately, you may have noticed that the fancy new models have a lot of awesome features. Since they don’t play records, the song options are practically unlimited for any jukebox hooked up to the Internet. That’s an awesome improvement, even if I do kind of miss the art of a perfectly-stocked jukebox. But there’s another “improvement” in the new models that is definitely not awesome: the option to pay extra and have your song played next. That just goes against every rule of jukebox sociality and I hate, hate, HATE it.
Here’s the thing: a jukebox is a machine for the commons, invented for common people to share common (popular) music in common. Sure, people play terrible music all the time on jukeboxes. That’s just one of the risks of existing in a space with people of divergent tastes. But, just as often, people pick songs that immediately, magically, instantaneously create community among total strangers, right before your eyes. Go find a jukebox and see what a quarter will do, indeed.
The new pay-more-to-skip-to-the-front-of-the-line feature stratifies and divides and ruins both the machine and the milieu. I think of all those times that I’ve been in a bar, with friends, late at night, short on cash, when we fed our very last dollar to the jukebox and hung around, nursing our drinks just long enough to be able to hear “our song.” The fact that someone can step in and prevent that one little bit of shared joy simply because they’re impatient and they’ve got mo’ money seems not only solipsistic and unfair, but downright mean.
If you are one of those people who uses this new feature, well, as they say on the Internet, I’ve got questions. About you. About your understanding of minimally decent norms of sociality. About who appointed you Ruler of the Realm and Destroyer of Joy. About where you get off pulling that kind of nonsense.
About why you hate the people so,
Click here to return to the “anchor page” for #30DaySongChallenge2016 with the full list of this year’s picks