Today for me my best friends are the people in whose company I find comfort, who make me think and ponder on ideas, whose words allow me insight into what could potentially be on my own mind as I listen to them, who give me honest and real inputs on my life and who care for me and vice versa in all those from me as well.
If I look at the first three of these ideas, I understand what my oldest human best friend means when she says that she grew up with music being her closest friend. I am on the same page as her. For the longest time and even today for the most part, music is one of the biggest parts of who I am.
The songs I listen to give me a lot of insight into who I am. And they manage to do so in various ways. The songs I choose to skip or play tend to make me understand how my mood is and what’s on my mind currently. The melody sets the ambience to explore the rabbit hole that is my mind on such occassions. The lyrics allow me to think of dreams, ideas and also concepts portrayed by the words. Eg: Strangers in the Night took my mind on a journey of what it means to trust someone on an instinct (as someone who relies strongly on it, it was a long deep thought indeed).
Another fascinating commonality between best friends and music is how they have a huge impact on ones feelings on any given day. And needless to say, I happily gave music that power in my life. My playlist has essentially remained the same since 2012. This also makes it evident that my genre of choice in music has remained the same throughout. Like a mirror it reflects how I see myself as a person while also shaping me repeatedly into this person today. 25000 plus minutes of music in 5 months in 2021 is a big giveaway I guess.
Then there is the flip side of the coin. Since music has played such an influential role in my life, it has also cemented certain perspectives for me. It was recently suggested to me that perhaps changing my music tastes, even if for a short time, may broaden my outlook towards many things.
Currently my music repertoire significantly comprises of Hindi songs. Thus the easiest way I found to experiment was on language. To create to a new playlist I added the few English songs I already had and the algorithm did the rest of the work. End result: 50 plus songs, all from the same genre, none that I’ve not heard before. Sucess! It was so predictable that a friend saw it coming before I even started the exercise!
Listening to this new playlist doesn’t drive my mind with the same intensity as the Hindi playlist so that’s a plus. The other idea is to add instumental music but I’m not willing to bet a single ruppee that it won’t be instrumental covers of my same old songs.
Time to actually expand my taste in music it seems. It feels like trying to make a new friend, one who isn’t like us and that’s why we worry in starting the process of befriending them. Wish me luck!
Ramblings of an idle mind 