One Hundred Ways to Listen to Music

"There are as many ways to listen to music as there are of being alive. Here, organized somewhat arbitrarily, are an even hundred of them. . . ."

For Particular Feeling States

To wake up, to feel awake
To feel good, have fun, be mellow
To feel as if the music were playing you (just as a violin is playing music)
To get frenzied
To get a pheromone surge (as in drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll)
To feel primitive (pre-language)
To soothe the savage beast
To witness specific emotional responses
As a counterirritant (a focus for all your irritations)
To calm down, let go, ease anxiety (at the dentist, in company, home alone)
To feel civilized (not hunting/gathering but at the concert in a state of leisure)
To listen without intention, just to see what will happen
To lift out of depression, to make it through the night
To gain courage
To ease pain, to heal
To pray
To become very still (listen and silent contain the same letters)
To escape thought, undo words
To cry
To be half asleep
To go to sleep

For Physical Activities

To dance
To workout
To walk or jog
To increase physical coordination, as physical therapy
To do yoga
To get or give massage
As pure energy, with no surfaces to grab onto

For Ritual

To get married
To prepare for battle, wage war
To grieve — for a funeral
To exorcise demons
To appease the gods
To help celebrate a red-letter day or holiday
To demonstrate patriotism
To act out class demarcation (all dressed up at the opera)

As a Soundtrack

As a soundtrack for TV, or a video game, or a movie
As theater cues that set the mood, cue lights and entrances
To accompany quotidian activity — homework, housework, reading, etc.
To think about stuff, solve problems, zone out
As a trip enhancer (pot, LSD, coke, Ecstasy, etc.)
To flirt and/or seduce
For sex
For eating
For talking
To fantasize, make up stories to, to express your own story
To shop
To sell stuff
To convince, increase patriotism, proselytize (Wagner by Nazis), as propaganda
To help protect the Good Old U.S.A. (In a low-profile U.S. government security building, while geeks hack cyber codes of potential enemies, rock 'n' roll blares out through large speakers, thus helping the hackers meet 'one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation,' according to President Obama. An office gong heralds each breakthrough.
New York Times 5/3/09)

For Getting into the Music

To become as engaged as possible, as if music were living spirit, and living in it
To identify with the composer or the players
To marvel at the talents and qualities of the performers
To be one end of a string: stimulus/response, expectation/gratification, give/take, and so on
To follow the written score
To follow layers or parts
To follow instruments
To track how things morph
From the bass up (a clue to how most composers hear)
To witness the mind as it cognizes musical patterns
To follow formal aspects
Repeatedly, focusing on one element each time, then everything at once
To compare words/no words
To compare eyes open/eyes closed
To learn to play it

For Getting into Music History or Cultural History

To appreciate historical continuity (composer to composer, period to period)
To imagine living at a certain time in history, or to experience the music as history (as in the wild premiere of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps)
To appreciate historical context and change: to learn history from old to new
The same, chronologically backward

For a Sense of Place and Context

To understand where you are and whom you're with
To ask what the music is telling you
To ask what the music wants from you
To help you get from place to place: Maestro, a little traveling music, please

For Personal Reasons

As a fetus through the womb
As your friend when you are by yourself
As if you were a microphone, to maintain a neutral, nonjudgmental state
As an object of meditation
To solve a problem
To reminisce or relive certain moments the music recalls
To say good-bye to someone, or to part of your life
To drown out other sounds
Loudly, to get back at the neighbors
To avoid something, including yourself, your monster
To impress someone
As a commodity: to market it
As an affirmation: proof of the existence of good
As if these were the last sounds you ever will hear
As if the music were listening to you
As little deaths
As a palliative for death and dying while revivifying life
As if for the first time, with virgin ears
To transcend the world, including music

To Enhance or Define Relationships

To listen with someone else — to be in each other's listening
Eyes closed, holding hands
Dancing with a partner or partners
All alone in a crowd (for instance, standing still, eyes closed, inside a dance jam)
Alone together in a group: campfire songs
In a crowd, with the crowd's ears/in a crowd with your own ears
To feel yourself as one human in the whole of humanity

Number One Hundred

Just because