taking it whole

Have it your way, someone said. And you can. Take albums, for instance. No longer do we have to suffer the weaker tracks, the songs that bore us and leave us drifting. No need to lift the stylus and replace it gingerly, hoping not to scratch the precious vinyl. No need to press ff and guess where the next track starts. No need to press 'skip' on the CD remote. Just don't bother downloading the track in the first place. Don't rip it; don't burn it. Just ditch it.

But those tracks are part of the treasure because they give the context for the songs you love more than anything else. They help to tell the story, the whole story, even if you aren't listening to a concept album from the heady days of the 70's. We need the fullness. That struck me again whilst listening to Ohio by Over The Rhine. It's a sprawling double-album that is studded with songs that are more than fine; there are also weaker pieces that I often skip over. But taking it whole I realised that mixing and matching was robbing me of the larger canvas of ideas and the need and opportunity to respond to lesser material, even while being drawn more tightly into the finer moments.

Of course I'll still listen to isolated tracks and maybe even play them shuffled. But maybe I need to make time, too, to listen to the whole artistic expression because the artist has something to say. And I won't get it by ipodding them into a parody of Normal Collier.

And listening to the whole might do other things, too. Teach me patience and tolerance. Allow time to uncover gems that only surface on repeated listenings. Gems of rare quality that instant karma cannot yield. To learn the rhythms of life where moments of joy are couched within the lesser. Diamonds in the dark and in the gloom and in the partial light of days undawned.