IDEA | MUSIC

A collection of music made at the turn of the century. The time of my birth.

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of creative waves. The fact that there’s something invisible in the cosmos being picked up by many different artists across the world at the same time seems truly magical.

With music in particular it’s as if the raw energy of a certain moment can be captured and expressed without much strain. Like this is the form that the cosmic energy has been waiting for.

Artists can be understood as antennas tuning in to certain signals as they pass on by — Signals that were perhaps generated at the very beginning of everything. I enjoy thinking of these signals like radio waves, floating endlessly across the universe, never dying, but just waiting to be picked up.

I find that the map of the Cosmic Relic Radiation, the energy expelled by The Big Bang, can abstractly represent this idea of creative signals enveloping everything, fluctuating, with every new wave carrying its own distinct energy.

The Relic Radiation of The Universe

In terms of music, I’m not talking about genres per se. Punk, jazz, rock and roll. It’s relatively easy for us to group songs into musical families. We don’t have to be aficionados in order to do this. But there’s a vibe that transcends these surface labels. Some essence made up of millions of intricate and imperceivable details and decisions. Something that forms a feeling larger than the sum of its parts — Maybe this is all that magic really is. Who knows.

But I find that a fun way to tune into this energy is to treat music as a form of guided meditation. To get very still and quiet, close my eyes, put on a song, good headphones help, and just follow it from beat to beat, focusing on my breath and basically nothing else.

Of course I’m not saying to do this with every song. But just try it with one you know you love. It sounds very fucking pompous but I cannot deny that I often find when I open my eyes at the end of it all I feel incredibly refreshed. But like everything in this cosmos, this is just another way to absorb ideas.

Take it or leave it, but at least try it.

The above playlist comprises music made in the years around my birth. I don’t know if anyone else here has ever felt the same way, but I always notice this weird kinship with the music that was popular around the time of my formation. Not the songs of my childhood necessarily, but those that existed just before I came along. The sound in which I was born into, so to speak.

Perhaps it has something to do with this aforementioned notion of ancient cosmic waves. If music is the sonic manifestation of the universe’s creative energy at that moment, then we could simply be its human manifestation.

Food for thought, digestion, and then eventual shit.

Peace.

RELIC RADIATION