It's the song that opens with the "Listen-Listen-Listen-Listen-Listen to Me" sample

Opening up a newly purchased CD excites me, always has. First thing you do with a new CD is play it obviously, and I used to have a VW golf – red, five speed manual, good gas mileage great car, never should have parted with it – that had a six disc CD changer in the trunk. I tended to buy multiple CDs at a time in those days and the excitement I felt was tinged with hesitation as I tried to decide which new sounds would best deliver me into a good driving experience. If you don’t drive – probably if you’ve never driven stick either, which demands and encourages a very visceral tactility and enhances your sense of connection between you, the vehicle, and the path you take from one destination from the next – you may not know quite what I’m getting at, but the soundtrack can make or break something as simple as a trip to the grocery store. Anyways, as I was saying, the moments from exiting the store to starting the car were always pregnant with a sense of possibility. I liked new music, needed the fresh discoveries it offered, and unlike say a book which takes time and active attention, I would know in two or three songs how thorough an attachment, how large a space, a given disc might create in my life. I would be wrong half the time, but part of the experience was making snap judgments with very little to go on. If the first disc did not ingratiate itself immediately, I had another new thing clicked into place in my trunk and I could fire it up and start over with a touch of a button.
That was then. For some time now, I’ve been anti-gratuitous expressions of purchasing power. Gratuitous has come increasingly come to mean “not absolutely essential.” There are various ways to pursue this goal according to this meaning, and in my case life circumstances have facilitated the purity of the pursuit. Partially out of necessity and partially out of an inexpressible if not opaque desire to simplify the control my possessions had over me, I got all Spartan and ascetic and proud about being Spartan and ascetic.
There are some problems with this approach, especially when it takes more energy and thought-time to enact than a simple gluttonous living-beyond-your-means orientation otherwise would have. I mean, I still smoke and drink and curse, which may be a way to fend off any lurking premonition that I am succumbing to the soft vapid ethos of the dyed-in-the-wool Hippie, but there’s nothing innately simple or meritorious to early death and incessant vulgarity.
Some associates who share basic demographic traits with me – youngish, slightly at odds with the Orwellian surveillance techniques that flourish in this small insulated community, interested in music film sports etc. – have become mail-order junkies. They resuscitate whatever loneliness deadens in them by turning to simulacra and other people’s disembodied voices. This may not be the most ennobling thing a person could do, but there are worse things to do than spend money and time in a way that helps you cope with the singularly rough edges of your unique life. But are there better things, too, is what I'm asking.
I also still like stuff a lot – exposure to newness gives me a sense of achieving that newness myself – I just don’t get the stuff I like. I’m not so sure there is a lesson there. Plus, I’ve come to realize how strange it is to deny yourself happiness in order to feel better about yourself, especially when the self-denying part of you leaves another part of you bored and undernourished and maybe even a little bit resentful of the porcine selfishness of the general population. Turns out no one is keeping score, but it takes a good deal of something – character or experience or fortitude – to make the acknowledgment of this more than mental window-dressing.
I woke up from a nap about ten minutes ago with the last image of a dream I was having impressed on my mind. I don’t know whose child it was, but the image was of a child, toddler actually, opening up a present as a circle of others who loved the child very much observed. Said child was too young, according to my dream-understanding, to fathom what the actual thing she received was. Her jubilation stemmed from being the center of attention as faces looked at her with joy and voices cooed their approval of how quickly she had dispatched the wrapping paper.
I’m not even going to try to unpack all the other thoughts and associations that came to me as I shook off the thin skein of drowsy post-nap disorientation, but it occurred to me a few minutes later that we were nurtured into this kind of relationship between emotional and psychosocial well-being and purchasing stuff. Going against what was once nurturing is more than difficult, it’s effacing. I don’t mean to come off all insightful about this – I’ve read Marx, you’ve read Marx or at least we’ve both watched Fight Club – and it’s no great discovery to note that the consumerism is empty writing has been on the wall for a numbingly long time. Figuring out a) which way you will choose to butter your bread b) how much time and thought you’ll give over to the decision and subsequent evaluation of said bread, isn’t something you figure out – you just do it and make changes as you go b/c there are no real pit stops anymore.
If you’re getting bored with this, I don’t blame you. Most self-reflexive “how should I live?” musings are masturbatory, and this one is also heavily digressive and about to become more so. I may be in the minority in being seized by this issue. As I said, it’s part choice, part necessity, and as I weigh the pros and cons of re-enlisting for another tour of duty here, the general value of enforced austerity has repeatedly surfaced. Leave it alone, and stick to the doing and changing as you go.
Pardon the confessional tone. I can talk about primacy of experience and living a life rather than attempting to manage it, and of course there’s value to that, but I’m talking about it through my fingers – pushing it out into existence onto this screen right here. To circle the square, the possibility I used to find in opening new things now lies in getting thoughts out in a fairly satisfying fashion, and the major difference is the thoughts really don’t get “out” because the movement from one place to another, and the shifting through the gears and play of the clutch, is propelled by a qualitatively different soundtrack.
Have a good weekend. Eat something greasy.