Rest Right, Reset
Regular readers will probably have noticed that Sunday Thoughts has been conspicuous by its absence over the past couple of weeks. One week was because nothing had come to mind that I thought was worth writing about. I could have sat down and bashed out a piece for the sake of it, but that has never really been what this column is about. If I don’t have something I genuinely want to say, I’d rather say nothing at all. Or as my great-grandad would have said: “If you’ve got nowt to say, then say nowt!”
The following week we were away at the North West Audio Show, which rather took over life for a few days. If you’ve not already done so, you can read all about that here. Shows are brilliant but absolutely exhausting affairs, and by the time Sunday morning arrived at Cranage, the last thing on my mind was trying to come up with something vaguely profound for a Sunday morning.
The funny thing is that not writing this column for a couple of weeks made me realise that perhaps taking a break isn’t something we should always feel guilty about.
We seem to have developed this weird expectation that we should always be doing something. If we’re not working, we should be answering emails. If we’re not answering emails, we should be reading something that improves us in some way. If we’re sitting quietly, someone will no doubt suggest a podcast, an audiobook or a productivity app to make better use of our time. Even our downtime has somehow become another thing to optimise and make better. And I’m as guilty of it as anyone. At HiFi PiG, we never really switch off. There are always press releases arriving, reviews to edit, photographs to sort, videos to publish, social media to keep fed and watered, and another show looming large on the horizon. We joke that we work 365 days a year, but there is more than a morsel of truth in that statement. We have every intention of taking proper days off, but then another news story pops up, another email arrives, or another idea needs exploring. Before you know it, what was supposed to be a quiet afternoon has turned into another day at work. Last Friday we intended to get the newsletter out and then go for lunch and then to a couple of art galleries, but as soon as I’d sent the newsletter’s mailer, something happened to WordPress that threw a spanner in the works of our best-laid plans – some things just can’t be put off. I’m beginning to recognise that I’ve always got about five projects on the go at any one time – some come to fruition, some get put in a file that I will pick up on later, and some are just so lunatic-fringe that they just get binned. My computer is full of files of these ideas, and there are genuinely some interesting ones in there, but finding the time to develop them into fully-fledged “things” isn’t always viable.
The same applies to all sorts of things. Some people decide to take a month off alcohol now and again. Others stop with the whole social media thing for a while. Some go off-grid for a weekend. Whether those things appeal to you or not isn’t really the point. The point is that stepping away from something for a while often changes the way you feel about it when you come back. Like all those files on my computer, occasionally I’ll go back to them with fresh eyes and fresh ideas.
I found myself thinking about this because, although I’ve still been listening to music every day, I’ve not really been listening to our big reference system. That probably sounds a bit odd coming from someone who spends a good part of his working life writing about HiFi. The system has certainly been switched on. I’ve still been DJing for a couple of hours most evenings. BBC 6 Music continues to introduce me to artists I’d never otherwise have discovered, and there’s usually something playing somewhere in the house. But what I’ve deliberately not been doing is sitting in the listening chair and analysing every tiny detail. I’ve just listened to music when I felt like listening to music, and when I didn’t, I did something else. To be fair, the World Cup has been a bit of a distraction, and it’s been nice to see the England team doing so well, though the late nights aren’t conducive to getting up and getting on with work – I think it was after 2 am this morning when I got to bed after the England-Norway match.
We hear phrases like compassion fatigue, news fatigue and social media fatigue all the time. However important, shocking or wonderful something is, constant exposure to anything gradually dulls its impact. Just look at the news. A story that dominates every front page for a week will often disappear almost overnight, replaced by something else demanding our attention. Wars don’t stop because the headlines move on, and humanitarian crises don’t magically resolve themselves because broadcasters have found a fresher topic to discuss. But somehow our attention moves anyway. I don’t think that’s because we’re uncaring; I think it’s because our brains simply aren’t designed to sustain the same emotional intensity indefinitely. And let’s face it, the news at the moment is ridiculously fast-paced. What was once extraordinary becomes part of the background. And we are bombarded with news and all the rest of it faster and more intensely than at any previous time in history. It’s truly exhausting!
What’s this got to do with HiFi, Stu?
Well, how many times have you sat down, put on the same handful of favourite tunes and congratulated yourself on how good they sound? There’s nothing wrong with that, and they’re favourite records for a reason. But after the fiftieth or hundredth play, are you really hearing them, or are you hearing your memory of them? We have shelves full of vinyl and racks containing CDs that haven’t been played in years. We have Qobuz with more music than I could listen to in several lifetimes. But somehow I still find myself reaching for the same albums time and time again. I know exactly what’s coming next. I know where the goosebump moments are; I know the tracks that make me smile and the ones that make me turn the volume up. That might seem to be a bit of an odd comment, but even after more than 40 years, I can’t listen to Hotel California without hearing the repeated “you can never, you can never, you can never” that was on the Ring O Bells pub juke box until someone kicked it and the record jumped on from its stuck position.
There’s comfort in familiarity, but familiarity can also become a bit of a trap. Familiarity breeds contempt, or perhaps familiarity breeds indifference is a better way to put it. Look at Keith Don’t Go. It’s a great track, but it never fails to raise a bit of a groan whenever I hear it at a show – which is thankfully not as often as it used to be. I have it on vinyl, but have played it exactly once since I bought it. I’m still not entirely sure why I bought it, because I knew I wouldn’t play it.
Every now and again, I’ll deliberately put something on that I know very little about, or try something that I know is unlikely to be up my street. Sometimes it’s an artist recommended by a friend, and sometimes it’s something I heard briefly on BBC 6 Music. Occasionally it’s an album that ROON insists I’ll enjoy, despite usually getting it hilariously wrong. Some records leave me cold, others are switched off halfway through. But now and again an artist I’d never previously heard of suddenly becomes part of my regular listening, and I wonder how I’d managed to miss them for so long – hello, Future Islands. But even the albums I don’t particularly enjoy have served a purpose; they’ve interrupted my routine to a greater or lesser extent. They’ve forced my ears and my brain to stop predicting what’s coming next, and they’ve reminded me that there is a ton of music in the world beyond my own comfortable not-so-little bubble.
Perhaps that’s the real benefit of taking a break. It’s not about denying yourself something you enjoy. It’s the exact opposite of that. It’s about preserving your ability to enjoy it by giving your brain and ears a bit of a rest. If you spend every waking moment critically listening to your HiFi, eventually it risks becoming another part of work. If every album becomes an assessment of soundstage, timing, bass extension and image depth, there’s a danger that you forget why you got into music in the first place. I suspect most of us didn’t fall in love with music because we heard a snare drum extended a foot beyond the outside edge of the loudspeakers. No, we fell in love because a song made us feel something emotionally.
Over the next few days, I’ll probably find myself wandering back into the listening room with a glass of plonk (I might have a month off that soon, too), putting a record on and sitting down without anything in particular to prove. I suspect that the system will be exactly as it was a fortnight ago. Nothing will have changed, but I reckon it might sound different to my newly refreshed lugholes.
Sometimes all it takes is walking away from it for a little while, and as I’m writing this, I can feel the internal excitement at the prospect of sitting down and having a proper listening session.
What do you think?
Stu
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