Ketchup!

Thinking of the way we consume music these days made me think of Ketchup, oddly enough that doesn’t even make it to the list of strangest things I’ve said. Music today is the condiment of everyday life, walking to work add music, doing chores add music, taking a shower add music, working out add music, nodding off to sleep add music. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, it does make everything better. But to me it begs the question, are we really doing justice to the medium?

If you think of ketchup and the tomato sauce in a pasta, they’re effectively the same thing, except the experience of having the two couldn’t be more different. Ketchup is an afterthought, its the robin to the french fry batman, while in the pasta, the tomato sauce is the centre piece, it’s Superman saving an otherwise bland spaghetti Metropolis.

All these thoughts we triggered from a rather simple event, my earphones broke. They were cheap earphones which I got as a “temporary replacement” to my absolutely delightful Klipsch S4i’s that died. It was at that moment I realised that my “temporary replacement” had lasted a whole year . . . a whole year listening to music as a condiment.

So I write this post with a plan to put an end to it. I’ve splurged on a rather nice pair of headphones and have decided to spend time to listen to an album every weekend. Find a comfy spot on the couch and listen to a full album end to end and do nothing else in that time. I’ll call it my #albumthisweek project, and plan to cover stuff I’ve never heard before, stuff I’ve heard a million times, old stuff, new stuff, anything. 

PS: I realise this sounds like a late new years resolution, I’m just hoping that it lasts more than most resolutions do.