iTunes Advice and Beyond

Over the past few months, I undertook the project to listen to all of the music in my iTunes library that I hadn't listened to in over a year (since iTunes conveniently keeps track of stats like that).  It was over half my collection.  Since I was going through so many songs, I also set about the task of ranking the entire library, something I had always been too lazy to do.

I know are all kinds of ways to sort my music, including the Genius option, but I figured:  What's the point of having all this music if I never listen to it?  Sure, the amount of music is measured in days, not hours, but that's kind of the whole point.  I had been getting so sidetracked looking for and listening to new music, that I had been ignoring massive portions of my collection.

As I plowed my way through my fairly sized collection (none of it pirated, by the way), I forced myself to listen to every single track all the way through, even if I hated a song and ended up giving it a low rating.  Well, it was worth it.  I discovered a number of songs I had forgot how much I liked, and now that they're ranked, it's much easier to find them.

I was as excited about some songs
as I am that they're making
a Captain America movie.

While I'm on the topic (and I alluded to this in my Fireworks post), I have rediscovered listening to the radio.  There's something I really enjoy about having no control over what song is coming next.  I've been listening to Montgomery's Mix 103 a lot this summer, and I've heard a number of awesome songs that I hadn't heard in years and that I didn't own in my collection.  I have enjoyed the random quality of the radio so much, that I have purposefully not gotten onto iTunes to buy this or that song that I really liked after I heard it on the radio.  That way, I won't overplay it to myself, and when it comes on the radio the next time (which could be a day, a year, or a decade later), I'll be genuinely excited.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Let's go deeper here.  This predicament is a perfect example of the exhaustibility of the inexhaustible stuff with which the world presents us.  This need to strategize so as to not get tired of this or that song tells me something about my human condition.  There are a number of songs that I love, songs that speak to my heart in deep ways that I find it hard to express in words (which isn't a problem, because it's a song).  These kinds of songs - I would be quick to say that I could never grow tired of them.  But that's not entirely accurate.  I've done it before that I have loved a song so much, that I've listened to it over and over and over again, and now, years later ... I still hate to listen to the song.  Wait, when did that happen?

A song, even a beautiful song, is still just a created thing.  It's still finite.  It's still just an echo of what is truly Beautiful.  Music is only one part of the human experience, something that is part of our journey towards our End.  Just like money, power, food, drugs, etc., if we give too large a portion of our attention on music or any other created thing, then we've mis-used it.

The songs that I don't ever grow tired of?  They're the ones that point me to God.
(NB:  That doesn't mean they have to be "religious" songs.)

I hope this makes sense--I don't know if I've expressed it very well.

A photo having naught to do with this post:

They called me King Farouk in Egypt.
Can you tell why?