Microdosing Mindfulness, part 2
Put your phone down. Put your records on.
I bought my daughter a record player for her birthday years ago. Her first albums included The Kinks, Linda Rondstadt, Taj Mahal, Madonna, and The Go-Gos. Whenever we could we would go browse the stacks at our favorite record shop, Vinyl Resting Place in North Portland. It’s an activity that lets us be literally hands-on with the music, immersed in the album art, subjected to the intentional organization of the artist’s songs onto Side 1 and Side 2, and fully engaged with one another in this shared thrill of browse and delight.
Recently my boyfriend and I rearranged the living room at his place, bringing his record player into the center of the room where it could get better use. Then we brought over some records from my place. And we borrowed some more from his sister. And now whenever we can, we scour the Wenatchee thrift stores for Tom Jones, Billy Joel, The Pretenders, Waylon and Willie, and other treasures like the other polka-playing Yankovic. We take turns selecting which album to play, propping up the cover near the record player to display the current selection. We look at the year the album was released, the track titles, song details, and who wrote the music originally. We learn while we listen, and we connect more deeply with the artist and music than if they had popped up in a mood playlist on Spotify. And we connect with each other more deeply by making music an intentional, mindful, shared experience.
PRACTICE IDEA - Bring intention to your music. If you have a record player, beautiful! Use it. Borrow and swap albums with friends and family. Seek out and find your local thrift stores and dig through their boxes. Pick up and examine the album covers, pull the vinyl from their dust jackets and peek at the physical grooves where the impressions of tunes become tangible. Take home an album you’ve never heard before and listen to both sides as it was originally recorded. Be with the sensations of selection, of placing the record on the machine and lifting the needle to set it down to play. Notice how the movement of your body affects the vibrations of the machine, and see if you can notice the vibrations of the music in your body. If you don’t have a record player, invite intention into your streaming service. You can turn off Autoplay in Spotify so that when you’re done listening to an album it won’t automatically start playing songs based off their algorithm. This allows you to pause, and intentionally choose to select a new album to play top down, as originally designed by the artist. Pick out an album and listen to it without skipping a song. Find out when the album was released. Listen to the music and visualize the notes landing on you like raindrops, let the artistry saturate your senses, and allow your body to move in response to rhythm.
