words are dead to me now

I decided several weeks ago to start listening to jazz. Many months ago—maybe it was during the summer, maybe it was during the spring—I was in an elevator and some music was playing and I realized that all these words, the useless lyrics I memorize almost instantly, probably occupied a large segment of my brainpower. There is a card catalog of songs up there to draw from whenever necessary. The songs are useless, the lyrics are useless, and my brain should be occupied with other things anyway.

I don't know when this started, this lyrical attachment I have. It's really obsessive. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with listening very heavily to Bob Dylan in 7th grade. I believe I saw "Don't Look Back" on A&E, decided Bob Dylan was cool, and found Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume One in my dad's record collection. It was the only Dylan record and was unopened. Every day after school I came home and listened to it several times the whole way through. This went on for months. The record is now worn out. I spent afternoons on end first trying to decipher the lyrics, then thinking about what they might mean. It was a good exercise.

Anyway years and thousands and thousands of songs later I have decided that this has all gone too far.

A few nights ago, my friend R. final delivered me my first jazz mixtape, and I'm impressed. On an unrelated note, he was talking about rock poster collectors and made an astute observation about this group: whereas regular people think about real things, rock poster collectors think thinking about music is thinking about real things. This is a mangled translation. Yet again I realized that I have been allocating too much mental space in this direction for awhile.

I am switching to wordless music for a little while. In the meantime, I will share my final musings on Liz Phair and call it a day.