Day 2: Listen

When I started to make my list of new things I could do, one of the first things that came to mind was to listen to an album straight through. No distractions. Just me and the music.

Why? Because it’s something I’m not sure I’ve ever done. Not like this. Sure, music is a constant companion; I’ll listen to an album straight through on a long drive, when I’m cooking, or while I work. I enjoy the music, but am I really listening?

I don’t know how many of the posts in the coming month will require a before and an after, but in this case, it seemed appropriate to provide some sort of chronology.

Before, or more accurately, some notes I jotted down over breakfast when I decided what I would be tackling today:

This is one of the little changes I’m looking forward to the most. If I’m being honest, my enthusiasm is split.

1. This is so far removed from my day-to-day routine – I’m really going to enjoy it!

2. It’s day two! Pick something that requires little to no effort! I have a feeling I might be wrong about this. We’ll find out.

Sometime before and after:

This evening, it occurred to me that I hadn’t really thought about choosing an album. Long story short, I settled on something that had ended up in my library because it looked interesting, but I had never actually taken the time to listen to it because distractions, an endless supply of music, who knows, who cares. How fitting.

I’ll spare you a full review of the album, but in case you’re curious, it was: Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini’s “What’s Next Vivaldi?”.

If you know me well enough, this won’t surprise you. If you don’t know me, all you need to know is that the violin, Vivaldi, and I have a long history.

Then there was the question of where I was going to spend the next hour and eleven minutes just listening. Yes, of course, I scrolled down to the bottom of the album to see the total time I’d be committing to this. I even considered looking for a shorter album. Terrible. This is exactly why I’m doing this – I need to break that habit. Anyway. I ended up on my yoga mat. The relevance of this detail will become clear in a second.

After:

That was not at all what I expected. I thought it would be harder to give an album my undivided attention for that long, but it wasn’t. Time flew by. Focusing was easy. At first, that focus went to familiar violinist tendencies – a furrowed brow, muscles wanting to wake up, too much thinking. Eventually, my penchant for the technical faded away and my focus turned to the music. Bliss.

It seems too obvious to state, but my eyes stayed closed most of the time. Even in a dark room, opening them felt like sensory overload (on a somewhat related note: if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of an orchestra that starts tuning, close your eyes. Listen. It does something magical to your brain, I promise).

At one point, the interior designer in me piped up and wanted to think about why I had started lying down on my back, sat up cross-legged at some point, and then moved to sit with my back against the wall. Why hadn’t I ever thought about the position my body would naturally want to be in when listening to music? I have about a million and one other thoughts on the subject, but for now I’m leaving it there. A question to pick back up another day.

P.S. Go listen to this album, it’s terrific :)

Day 1: Publish

I’m ready for change.

For well over a year, I’ve been ready for change.

So today, as I hit publish on the first post, I’m making a change. A small one. This is the first in a series of thirty tiny changes, one for each day of the month to come. My hope is that dedicating a little time each day to a new experience will (gently) see me through some bigger changes and that all of this will teach me a few lessons about novelty as a tool to ground myself and to broaden my horizons.

For now, I won’t get too far into the what and the why of this blog. That’s a story for another day. In the spirit of small changes, I will say this:

There have been various drafts of first posts, countless sketches of illustrations, and notes about how and what to photograph. A link to this blog has lived in my Instagram bio since 2019 at about this time of year – a constant reminder of that thing I want to be doing but am not. So, instead of managing this tinge of guilt, I’m letting go of the idea of what it should or could look like and am embracing the idea at the heart of the blog and its name: home, like meditation, is a practice.

Today’s little change is hitting publish. A little exhale after holding my breath for far too long. I’m saying hello to you, reader. Hello, new friend. I hope you stick around.

P.S. I have an idea of what a few of these little changes will be, but I don’t have a list of thirty. I’m open to suggestions, so if you’ve got an idea, please send me a note here.