So I've been reflecting on joy again recently. The keynote by Naila Ansari at the SUNYLA conference in June was, in part, about joy (as well as archives and archival silences and community), and the word has been floating around again the past week or so. And then I'm driving to work this morning, and I've got my energy playlist up because it is not below the fold, so to speak, on the screen like my current vibes playlist is, and I never remember to switch VLC on my phone off my sleep playlist until I get into the car and backed out of the driveway, and I don't like to fiddle with the screen too much while I'm driving.
Anyway, I'm driving to work, and Holst's Jupiter comes up as I get to campus, and I'm thinking about the anecdotes about The Planets and how the cleaning ladies were dancing in the aisles during the rehearsal for Jupiter. I turn the volume up for Jupiter; my husband got us tickets to see The Planets live in New York City at the Lincoln Center years ago, and live music that I like affects me pretty strongly. (I was similarly thrilled to go see a Vince Guaraldi Christmas music tribute.) So I'm a bit verklempt by the time I get to work, and it was kind of good that there was no parking (due to some event that took up all the close parking) and I had to drive around to the other side of campus for parking so I could emotionally settle again.
And so I'm thinking: I need to make a playlist for joy. With Jupiter and I don't know what else yet, because I haven't had a chance to actually put it together. "An die Freude" and the Flying Theme from E.T. and "Joy to the World/Jeremiah was a bullfrog" and???
There is some music for me that the joy is in the listening, and some that's in the playing/singing, so Moonlight Sonata is not likely to be on it (because that's a playing one, and I... critique the recordings of it I have). And it's not the same as my energy playlist: that has music chosen because it works well for either exercising or staying pepped up while working, similar to how my mom would put on the Mike Post TV themes album or Queen's greatest hits or Harry sometimes for big cleaning days. The joy playlist would be more like the feeling I get from a fireworks show, where I want to be close enough to feel the concussion of the blasts. (I recommend going to fireworks at the Empire State Plaza for this.)
In some regards this has been a longer introspection than just going back to June; I read Marie Kondo's book several years ago, and as someone who collects hobbies, reflecting on why I am doing them and what purpose they serve in my life has been useful. It's why I got a new piano and play regularly again after years of not. It's why I'm trying to find time in my life again to write regularly (still a work in progress). It's why I've tried to be more intentional with my time and do pros and cons evaluations (and time audits) rather than just taking on every opportunity/committee/hobby that looks interesting. (Somehow I am inadvertently on the governing boards for three professional organizations anyway for the next two years, but I have acknowledged that I am At Capacity and am not accepting additional responsibilities at the moment.)
A joy playlist, at least, shouldn't require anything new; I have access to a good-sized music collection (I have been buying CDs for 30 years now). And since I deleted my music folder on my phone and redid it, VLC has stopped wiping my playlists every time it rescans for media. (If you are having this problem, I fixed it by not having all the music files in one folder, but having them in folders by artist/album.) So I can safely make playlists without having to redo them every couple of days. Preferably it will not all be stuff that makes me happy-cry, because that's not particularly helpful while driving.
Anyway, that will probably take me all weekend. Scrolling through 6000+ songs in VLC takes a while. And then my morning commute can, until I feel like I need a new playlist for something I'm writing, focus on joy. Maybe we can sustain that feeling through November, and my NaNoWriMo story won't get derailed by some new panic this year.
As I've discussed with a few people at work, where we sold a lot of Marie Kondo's books back when they were hot, the problem with limiting your possessions to those that spark joy for some of us is that almost everything sparks joy. There are very few objects in my house, other than those that are there for purely practical purposes and which Marie would exempt anyway, that don't spark up some memory or other in me that gives a frisson of joy. And our house is stuffed to bursting with things.
ReplyDeleteThe same applies, to a slightly lesser extent, to digital "possessions". As I was saying in a post a day or two ago, I do really need to pare down my possessions for practical reasons sometime but I don't think joy is going to work as a marker for what goes and what stays.
The idea of classifying songs by the same criterion is an intriguing one, though. In my case I suspect they would all be very loud.