What surprises me is that I am actually glad I did this experiment.  I was hoping that by giving up listening to music in the background I’d be more inclined to listen to music in the foreground, and I really do think that I’ve achieved my goal.  But I’ve found out other things along the way, about myself as well as the society we live in.  By forcing myself to change my lifestyle in order to avoid music, I realised just how surrounded we are by it.  Every television programme, every advert, in shops, in pubs, in the barber’s – it’s EVERYWHERE.  Before I did this, I labelled myself a music-lover, but I wasn’t.  With my constant immersion in music and my surrounding myself with background noise, I was part of the problem.  In fact, I’m not sure if I valued music any more than all those ad agencies that use certain songs just to sell their products.

But not anymore.  Now, I’ve realised what it means to really love music, to really appreciate your favourite bands and the music that’s given me so many memories.  So I’ll leave you with one of my favourite songs of all time, and one that I’ve heard in my head probably a thousand times since I started doing this – Used  for Glue by Rival Schools.

This time, though, I did sit in what I thought would be silence.  But it wasn’t.  Even though I live in a very quiet part of what is already a very quiet town, I was still surrounded by noise – although it wasn’t at all intrusive.  The odd car going past, the sound of my next door neighbours occasionally popping outside for a cigarette, and even – at the risk of sounding a bit of a hippy – the noise of the birds flying around weren’t at all irritating.  In fact, it was actually quite enjoyable to sit there and “soak up” my surroundings.  Not only that; it was also nice to get away from always being able to hear music in the background, and it has made me more appreciative not only of the environment I live in but also the music that once I would have listened to just for the sake of it.

I really cannot remember the last time I enjoyed an album this much on first listen – in fact, I’d probably have to go back to the first time I heard either Morning View by Incubus or Metallica’s Master of Puppets way back in (I think) 2003.  Maybe, since then, I’ve listened to so much music and given so many albums no more than a second listen that a lot of it has rolled into one, and perhaps that’s dampened the impact of a lot of what I’ve listened to over the last five years.

Now, I’m not saying that Life Processes is going to have the same kind of impact as those two albums did all those years ago, but you never know.  After all, it’s the first album I’ve willingly listened to in three weeks, and that, in terms of my music listening, is a very long time.  One thing’s pretty certain, though – I think I’ve found a new favourite album of 2008.

Saturday night’s Amazon binge is beginning to show results. First through the letterbox this morning – the new ¡Forward, Russia! album, Life Processes. A record I’ve been keeping an eye on for a while, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I like what I’ve heard from ¡Forward, Russia! in the past, and secondly, because it was recorded with Matt Bayles handling the production, the man who has produced some of the best heavy metal albums of all time by the likes of Botch, Isis and Mastodon. Exciting stuff.

Seeing as this is the first CD I’ve bought during the experiment, I was interested to see how I’d react when it came to seeing it but not being able to listen to it. And even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to put it on, I still went through the usual routine of ripping open the cellophane and looking at all the packaging, almost as if I was looking for clues as to what to expect when I do finally get to hear it.

By contrast, the other day I downloaded the latest free Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, again, knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to listen to it. But even though the download came with all the usual trimmings, admittedly in digital form, I felt absolutely no desire to look at the artwork in the same way as I did when Life Processes came through the post. I’d heard it said before, usually by friends, that this is the very reason that people still by CDs – you get the whole physical package, to do with as you please. It’s almost as if buying a CD is a “proper” experience, and for some reason downloading music, even legally, still doesn’t have the same magic.

I guess the music buying experience was just another one of those things I was taking for granted, having been buying CDs for as long as I can remember, and I just didn’t realise how ritualistic the whole process is, or how much the process of listening to music is as much a physical thing as it is psyochological.

Despite falling off the wagon, as it were, I am fully convinced that it was a one-off and that these last few days will remain music free for me.  And after allowing myself that one, 3-minute indulgence, I’m looking forward to the end of this experiment even more, because listening to that song reminded me that I really, really do love music, and I honestly think I’ve learnt to fully appreciate what I was in danger of taking for granted.

Bollocks.