This morning on my way to work, I was listening to an Enya album of mine, and three songs in a row played that I really liked (and remembered well), and I asked myself, “wow, which CD is this?” It was “Shepherd Moons” in case you were wondering.
The same thing happened to me last week, while I was looking for some music to listen to. I have five albums from a band called Llewellyn, all of which are amazingly good. When I bought them, I purchased four CDs at the same time. I discovered I liked the first one quite a lot, then quickly gave the other three a quick run-through on iTunes (the only thing that application is good for anyway — previewing music) and made sure that I would like those as well. It’s a cool thing to find some good music really quickly, but the problem it caused is that I effectively mushed them together into one lump of similar music instead of taking the time to discover each album individually.
Back to my experience of last week, I wanted to listen to some Llewellyn, but not having it clear in my head which one was which, I did what I normally do, and picked one randomly. I got back to work and had it playing in the background, but after a while I started to realize that I really enjoyed this certain album, and it’s individual theme and style really started to shine through. I didn’t like just their music, I really liked this particular one album.
I know it’s probably hard to understand the point I’m making, but it’s basically that things tend to get blurred when I have too much of the same thing, and I don’t give each one a chance to stand all alone. One habit I’ve been in for a long time, which is very helpful, is to never buy more than one CD at a time. The reason is because I need to give each one a chance to be enjoyed and give it kind of it’s own little familiarity. When I don’t do that, things like this happen with both Enya and Llewellyn — they all blur together, and I randomly pick one of their albums instead of knowing and expecting which one will have what. When I get to know them individually, though, I enjoy them far more, and I can get into the music. Then I can say something like, “Mysts of Avalon is a great album.”
