Consumption Junction

This is meant to be the soundtrack to your life but sometimes, the music plays and the result must be written. Such was my night. Let me break it down for you.

7:30pm - I've just finished an event that I'm hosting and am privileged enough to attend an intimate concert featuring the magnificent Dawn Tyler Watson and Paul Deslauriers. I was with my brother, who I turned to and said "I could listen to their music 24 hours a day". He agreed wholeheartedly. Nothing defines simplicity like their stripped-down, bluesy folk and their interpretations of Rob Lutes songs made me wish that I could write just one love song the way he does.

9:00pm - I step out of the Segal Centre, inspired and invigorated, ready to walk to the metro and head home to watch you fall asleep. I bundle up, prepare to face the cold and look forward to taking refuge under my trusty Bose headset to the beat of Slacker Radio. Ra Ra Riot's Too Dramatic comes on, making me reconsider not putting their latest album on my top 10. By the time the song ends, I'm on the metro and need to switch from radio to iPod. I am taken to The Bleeding Heart Show, my favourite New Pornographers song and a true masterpiece. It is followed by the spooky but marvelous Touch From Your Lust by Ben Harper. I am then taken back to one of my favourite albums of all time with Pillar of Davidson from Live's epic Throwing Copper.

9:10pm - At this point, I'm back outside and ready to get back on the Slacker train. This is when the word consumption pops into my mind. I had made the conscious switch back to radio as soon as I could so that I could consume new music. I need it. It’s more than entertainment, it’s nourishment. The word consumption made me stop in my tracks for so many reasons. First, I so closely identify with a word that relates by music intake with my use of a utility; vital, daily and consistent. Second, how interesting is it that as a music lover, I am at once the consumer and the consumed. As much as I have a rabid hunger for music, its effect on me is so much more serious. But most importantly, as I write this and wonder what this music will sound like to you, I haven't really considered how it is that you'll even consume the music that you listen to. I get my music from my iPhone library and Slacker while on the go, from grooveshark at the office and in concerts that still resemble those that my parents (ok, maybe just my mom) went to in their day. I consider myself on the cutting edge of the consumer and consumed but have no concept of where that edge will be when you reach it. Just then, the left side of the headset completely gives in and I am left in monoland, knowing not how my music will be fed to me tomorrow morning but knowing for certain that an untimely blogpost will come of this.