Adventures Within Space

After spending 8 weeks in the wilderness, living with 3 other people in a cabin smaller than my bedroom, I've been feeling very humble. The shock of moving from a bare and open place, to the crazy and clutterfilled mess of my home gave me a certain epiphany of sorts.

Why do we buy more things to try and simplify our lives? Why can't we just focus on what we already have?

And thus, I went on a quest to minimalize my life. I cleared out all the clothes from my closet that I never wore. In the end I found that I had 20 shirts. Not shirts with long sleeves even, just 20 shirts.

"For goodness sake," I said to myself, "Why do I need all these shirts I can only wear for 4 months out of the year?"

I cleared out my bathroom supplies, keeping only the things that I knew I used in convenient locations. No more hassling through loads of unused hair products that seemed to have no purpose. I've also been trying to read various books in my house instead of going out and buying some.

Then I thought of a brilliant idea.

"I spend so much time trying to find good music. But my mom keeps a collection of hundreds of CDs in my basement that I haven't even listened to yet."

My mom started organizing these CDs a year ago. She hasn't made much progress.

My goodness! I've got an amazing library right before my eyes!

Now, knowing my mom, she wasn't going to let me organize the CDs myself because she has a special system. Also knowing my mom, she wasn't going to help me out because she thinks she has better things to do. The only option I had was to organize it all digitally.

In iTunes, I discovered that you can make multiple libraries. This way, I could keep all my world music in one library, my Balkan music in another library, my various rock songs in another library, and my jazz in another library. Perfect. I persuaded my dad to get me a 1 TB hard drive (I would've been fine with 500 GB but it was only $20 more to bump it up).

Then, I began importing whatever CDs seem to catch my eye. In the past two days, I've listened to a ridiculous variety of music, such as...

• Holst's The Planets
• An entire symphony orchestra made up of accordions
• A compilation of Afro-Portuguese music
• A Native American rock band
• A compilation of New Wave music
• Various Russian orchestral pieces

It's amazing. I'm culturing myself on the entire world.

By the end of my adventures, I hope to have a basic knowledge in jazz and classical, as well as having the ability to recommend good Balkan music to those unaware of the genre. It's all the music I've listened to before, but now I'm listening more consciously because I know the titles and artists of the songs that I'm hearing. Soon, I'm gonna be a musical human encyclopedia.

Maybe I could turn this into a daily practice. A CD a day. Hmmm.