well, anyone who has hung onto the ireallylovemusic rss feeds for a while will have noticed a slowing down in posts.
the reasons were many and boring, but one of the main causes was that music was becoming painful to experience. it seemed that whenever i tried to listen to music that incorporated noise (synths or guitar based the results were the same) after a few minutes my head began to hurt.
not my ears, (like others on the web i do suffer mild tinnitus for which i blame on-u sound, 1987 era swans, and my old walkman), but proper deep headaches.
during this extended period of annoyance i found the only music that could soothe the discomfort was blue note styled jazz, various david axelrod productions (sorry, but after years of hammering his classic albums, i’m still not bored of them), and various other corners of the $tateside archive.
in other words, old music.
as the situation went on, it was thought that maybe i should get my eyes checked over. i went to the relevant people who did some fun tests, after which it was confirmed that despite having sat in front of a computer for the last 20 years, the eyes are bearing up ok.
it was beginning to look like the headache was stress based.
after some soul searching i came to the conclusion that a lot of the stress that i lived with was down to my choice of mortgage paying duty.
yes, the job that pays the bills.
this meant there was only one real solution, and a plan was quietly put in place.
the outcome of which, is that as of january 1st, i am performing a different task during office hours, and lo and behold, today for the first time in months i have been able to listen to noisy modern(ish) synth-n-guitars based pop music with little indication of pain surfacing (cut/copy, van she, the cazals, the presets).
if such goodness persists, then all being well, the site will begin to tick tock in 2011.
i’ll leave it to you to decide how to rejoice, party, celebrate.
thanks
mark e/ireallylovemusic