Dance Party
Feb 17, 2014, 2:35 PM | Updated: 2:38 pm
I used to listen to podcasts all day long. I would listen to TBTL, You Made It Weird, This American Life, How Did This Get Made, Doug Loves Movies and The Flimdrunk Frotcast, usually in that order. This was when I had a 40 minute drive to and from work, and spent all day mindlessly clickity clacking away. My last job was repetitive and didn’t require too much thinking. I could listen to podcasts all day long.
I started my current job and quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to focus enough on a podcast to get anything out of it. Even with my full attention, I am barely competent enough to not get fired. So now I listen to music all day at work, and my commute is not long enough to get into a podcast, so I usually just listen to music on my walk too.
If I’m driving to do a set somewhere, I like to listen to music – pump up jams, specifically. It’s a good way for me to get the blood flowing and get into the kind of positive mindset I would like to have on stage.
Then I drove to Lynnwood the other day to help my mom buy an iPhone – Lord, beer me patience – and I bumped the cuts both ways. I had a golden opportunity to crush an episode of TBTL, maybe even two, but I chose to car dance the whole way to Lynnwood and back.
TBTL, and most of the other podcasts I like, feel like a conversation with friends, and sometimes your fiends want to have a conversation that reminds you of something that bums you out. I can’t control how a conversation with friends is going to make me feel, but I can control how music is going to make me feel by curating playlists of songs to make me feel how I want to feel. So I can listen to that Drake song when I want to feel like I am the kid with the motor mouth.
I’m guessing this is probably some kind of metaphor for how I interact with other people that I’m not emotionally present enough to recognize or articulate. If you happen to see me on the street, say hi so I have to interact and have a conversation with another person and I can’t hide in my headphones.
-Brent
Song of the day Your Loft My Acid Death in Vegas
PS I have the day off so I wrote this with no pants on. Happy Presidents Day!
