There's no such thing as background music.

I love music. With everything inside me, I love music. I love playing music, I love listening to music, I love making music. Do you love music?

Many people think that they love music, but to find out if they really do, all you need is the answer to this question, "Where do you listen to your music?" If the answer is, "Oh, I listen to music all the time, before I fall asleep, in the car, when I'm working around the house, music is just playing around me all the time." then you know that they really only love music shallowly.


I don't understand the term "background music". I really don't.
I have questions about this whole "background music" thing, and they are:
1. How am I expected to focus on two really important things at once?
2. Do you know what you're doing to yourself when you listen to "background music"?
3. Don't you want silence? At all?


1. How am I expected to focus on two really important things at once?
Explanation:
I do multi-task. I can't help it. If you want to get things done, you will multi-task. When you multi-task, however, you automatically choose to put one process a little lower than the others. You usually tend to put the more automatic process lower. It's something you've already done, and are comfortable with.
The reason parents answer their children "yes" to something that they never would have otherwise, is because their main focus is momentarily elsewhere. I don't care what you say, you cannot have your main focus be completely on two separate things that are happening at the same time. It's impossible. You can divide your time between two things, and switch your main focus back and forth, but you can't fully give your main focus between two things at the same time. And if, for some reason you think you can, then you obviously have never made something your main focus. Why do you think that we are constantly told to look only to Christ? It's because when Christ becomes your main focus, everything else just falls away.

Don't: invite me to ride in your car.
It's always a bad idea. The radio/Cd player turns on immediately when you turn on the car. Very rarely, is the song just starting, the song is usually half way done. My main focus immediately goes to the music, I can't help it, I've always been that way. I'm trying to figure out what's happening, where the music is stage wise, if there are singers what are they saying, and what the music is trying to express overall.
And then it happens, the single stupidest thing you can do, you start to talk.
Why do you do that? What in the world are you trying to say? Don't you understand that now, I have to pull my main focus away from the music, and try to put it on answering you? If you really wanted to talk, then why didn't you turn off the CD player? Why is it playing if you want to have a conversation? Don't you understand I can't be completely in the conversation, and be completely in the music at the same time? And I don't know how to choose which one is more important.

2. Do you know what you're doing to yourself when you listen to "background music"?
Explanation:
You're ruining your ears, not physically, but musically.
You're only listening to non-worthy-of-thought music.
You're degrading music.
You're being an idiot.

The last one was just for free. But I'm serious about the others. If you can "listen" with not paying attention to, music all day, Then you have completely lost a musical ear. It's become noise, not music to you. You've lost the power of sitting there in awe of what the music is doing, of what the artist is expressing, of the tricks that the composer is playing on you, of the achingly beautiful progression, of the moment when it all makes sense. (If you've never felt the above list of things, then you're listening to music that isn't worth listening to).
You're degrading music, you're asking it to sit below your level of conscious. Music deserves more than that.

Don't: have music just playing all the time.
Force yourself to sit down and focus on one song, for how ever long it takes. And listen to it, really listen to it. If you need any suggestions, I'm here for you.
I'm utterly amazed at the market that popular music has created for themselves. Business-wise it was genius. They have created music, that you will enjoy for a short period of time, and they'll so bombard you with that music that you'll soon grow to despise it. But, in the meantime, they've created new songs, that follow the old pattern easily, but are just slightly different enough for those songs to interest you. Don't you understand that you're going to grow to hate those too?

3. Don't you want silence? At all?
Explanation:
You know that we live in a portable music world. We can't get away from music. It's in the stores, it's in the elevators, it's in our cars, it's in our homes, it's in our i-pods, it's everywhere. But silence, is the most beautiful sound in the world. Good music makes you think, but silence makes you think harder. Walter Lippmann once said, "Many a time have I wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed"
Silence is beautiful. Please give it a chance.

Don't: take away all silence from your life.
Give yourself time to think about your music. Get away from the habit of having the radio on if you're really doing something else. Get away from the habit of being able to corner music away in your mind. Get away from the habit of listening to music that doesn't require your brain. Get away from the habit of being uncomfortable with silence.