the power of music, or something

i find i’m very particular about the music i’m listening to in a given situation. i cannot just listen to any song at any time - sometimes i am in a mood, or sometimes i have a particular area of thought i am trying to explore, or sometimes i am shopping around for the soundtrack to amvs that play in my head.

i am just as temperamental about what music i listen to while i work. certain kinds of work demand certain types of music - i write to ambient orchestras, answer emails to funk, research to orchestras, and program to breakcore. all of this is fine and helpful for putting me in the state of mind to get work done.

a problem arises, however, if i start to really like a song that i work to. if i want to continue liking it, i should probably take it out of my work rotation permanently so i don’t grow to hate it when i am inevitably frustrated with the work that i am doing - but if i do, i lose the psychological benefits that listening to a banger while i’m getting work done in the moment.

i understand this is an extreme first-world problem, but i actually have trouble with this. like, for example, i hubristically decided to put on an album from 2Mello - major contributor to the bomb rush cyberfunk soundtrack - when working on the newsletter project i announced a few days ago. i was making a lot of progress, the high-energy tracks were bumping in my ear, and everything was great. and then i hit a huge wall, i stopped making progress… but the high-energy tracks were still bumping in my ear, and i found i resented them for it.

it’s one thing if i start to feel that way about some random lo-fi playlist - it’s no skin off my nose to find another one of the quadtrillion that exist - but it’s quite another thing to start feeling that way about music i want to listen to off the clock. i generate mental associations with music very easily - a song that is playing while i engage in an activity is permanently associated to that activity after no more than the second listen. if that activity is hanging out with friends, meditating, or going on a lovely stroll, that’s perfectly fine. if instead it’s banging my head against an obtuse compiler error or following a research trail gone cold, it can be genuinely destructive.

i was struggling to close this with some kind of point or broader general observation but then i realized that this is my party and i can cry if i want to etc.