A List of (Sometimes Semi-) Music-Related Resolutions for 2018
January 1st annoys me because of its inelegant placement during the solar year. If humans had been properly scientific enough, a new year should begin the day of the winter solstice instead of ten days later, a date that has no grounding in the eternal calendar of the cosmos. I’d advocate for syncing things up, but that would mean wiping out the last chunk of December from our lives–and that would mean canceling Christmas for one year. That wouldn’t work, would it? People are still pissed about the calendar adjustment from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1582. (By the way, if you’re stubbornly following the Julian, Merry Christmas!)
So we’re stuck with making our New Year’s resolutions on this unhinged date following a period of year-end revelry. So without further delay, let me state that in 2018 I hereby pledge to…
- File those CDs that have accumulated over the last six months. I wish people would stop sending me discs (links MUCH preferred) because they only add to the piles of CDs I buy. More discipline is definitely required on my part.
- File all the vinyl I’ve purchased recently. There’s quite a pile on the floor.
- Finally learn how to properly use my new office stereo. At the heart of it is a NAD M50.2 Digital Music Player. Even though I’m a gadget guy, the learning curve on this thing has been steep. Very steep. I’m so intimidated by its operating needs I’ve barely touched it. And that’s just stupid.
- Learn to use the coffee maker in the home office. It can’t be that hard, can it?
- Delete all the useless pictures on my iPhone so I have more room for music. But who really wants to go through thousands of pictures? Have you ever tried to clean up your phone’s photo library?
- Spend more time learning to appreciate American blues from the 1920s, especially material from the Paramount and Okeh labels. (I blame Jack White’s PBS special, American Epic, for staring this new obsession.)
- Learn to connect my Google Home devices to other things so I can turn my home into one big HAL 9000.
- Go to a gig and keep my phone in my pocket the entire time.
- Listen to Gord Downie’s Introduce Yerself all the way through without having to stop for breath.
- Spend more time sitting outside in the sun with a sleeping bull terrier in my lap, listening to music on the backyard speakers and just…dreaming.
