The Living Music List #29: On Apathy
A pledge to make 2025 my most sincere year yet
Currently listening to: apathy by Gia Margaret
Apathy (ˈa-pə-thē): lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern.
Reflection
Hello, friend.
What lights a fire in your soul?
Music does it for me. It doesn’t take much, either—a couple chords, a guitar strum, a single note reverberates and suddenly I feel like I’m seeing into someone else’s world, peering into their brain. I’m feeling the same sensations being processed across their nervous system, or an echo of them at least.
This kind of experience lights a fire in my soul—witnessing a call to action and art. It makes me want to seek out the source of their inspiration. What led them to making something? What spurred them to act, and to feel the emotion they could not bare but to put to music?
Not everything lights a fire, of course. I recognize that many things either attempt to dampen the flames or simply fall flat, blowing out the smoldering tinder before it can really catch. This is often the “content” with which we are inundated. The soulless advertising masquerading as meaningful messaging.
Can we tell the difference these days? As a day passes us by, how much soul-igniting stuff have we really encountered compared with the stuff that passes in through one ear and out the other, missing our heart on its way?
Lately, I’ve noticed that this sort of stuff is not only pervasive, but it is infectious. It breeds apathy. I see children of all ages on their devices seeming constantly unsatisfied by the scrolling stream of stimulating videos and posts that don’t actually stimulate anything beyond a fleeting drip of dopamine. The message is invisible or barely there, then gone in a few seconds. The lasting meaning, if there is one, is a thin thread you try to grab, but it slips through your fingers at every feeble attempt, too tiny to hold onto.
So, why bother? Why bother looking for the inspiration when there clearly isn’t any? How can you stoke that dying fire inside without proper kindling?
Be sincere. Try. Chase wonder. Embrace the weird nature of this life. Listen to music. Stare at the individual brush strokes of a painting. Go down a rabbit hole researching the short, semi-charmed life of an artist who lived 200 years ago.
Be sincere. I think insincerity is really where this apathy begins. I’ve received mundane messages from friends with clips of real people dying followed by absurd memes. Those kinds of posts on social media always seem like not-so-subtle calls for help, and of course they are. We are not built to witness all this suffering from a distance with no real urge or ability to stop it. We are being insincere and avoidant at an all-time high because its the first (and usually only) coping mechanism we can think up. Christ, even the word “cope” is a word hurled at others only in cruel jest these days.
This year, I want to feel things. I don’t think that’s too much to ask of myself. I am going to try to cope with the shit through sincere means, like writing and music, not memes (okay, I’m sure there will be some memes, but I’ll be cutting down). I will reject apathy. I will care about others around me, for they are humans going through similar shit.
I am pulling back the veil, layer by layer. I am aiming to be present, to feel less of a departure from reality due to the walls, both phsycial and imagined, between the world and me. I am going to get out of my apartment and live.
I am going to light my own fires.
Music Recommendations
Hello again, friend.
Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you enjoyed the reflection—and I hope you can feel comfortable being sincere around the people in your life. We need to stick together and encourage each other not to fall into the trapathy (okay, that was terrible, I know, but uncensored, dad-joke level humor is utterly sincere, isn’t it?)
Anyways, onward again to the new music. Once again, the release schedule is slow around the new year, so only an ambient list again this week.
Happy listening.
The Living Music List—Ambient
Note: All of the below ambient projects are available on Bandcamp.
Time Forest by d york (album / organic, field recordings) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Music for Alien Temples by Various Artists (compilation / dark ambient, space) [Eighth Tower Records / Bandcamp]
A Wave of Light by Bing Satellite (album / drone, meditative) [Independent / Bandcamp]
The Passed Year - 2024 by Various Artists (compilation / variety of subgenres, including: drone, noise, electronica, experimental) [Passed Recordings / Bandcamp]
HEAL by Pavel Milyakov & Lucas Dupuy (album / electroacoustic, field recordings) [Independent / Bandcamp]
240112 by Dirk Serries’ Streams of Consciousness (album / drone, dark ambient) [Independent / Bandcamp]
D V A L I by Hyldýpi (album / ambient piano, drone) [Neotantra / Bandcamp]
2024 From the Dark by theadelaidean (compilation / dark ambient, noise) [Independent / Bandcamp]
The Best of 2024 by Various Artists (compilation / dark ambient, field recordings) [BLACK MARA / Bandcamp]
River & Sea by 111 (EP / drone, noise) [Independent / Bandcamp]
That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.
Your friend,
Melted Form
Remember to listen to the hum, buzz, & hiss of the world around you—there is music to be heard there.
Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:
Afterword—Let’s Get In Touch
Are you an artist, a label owner, or a member of the press? Want to share an in-depth feature of your upcoming release, an advertisement, or a guest post for a future Hum, Buzz, & Hiss issue? Get in touch with me at meltedform@gmail.com. As always, I would love to hear and recommend your music, especially if it’s new and ambient/electronic/experimental.
so beautifully written ❤️