No More No Music

Posted on May 14, 2025

The Silent Voice

When I was in my 8th grade in Junior High School, I really liked listening to music wherever I go. Back then, bicycle was my main mode of transportation and whenever I rode it, I would always plug on my earphone and jam. Some people at my church warned me, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to hear a horn while wearing earphones, but well I was as stubborn as a mule. Fortunately, I hadn’t gotten into any accident because of it.

Louder, Louder!

Before easy access to the internet, I used to download music I liked. I just had to search for the music video in YouTube, look for YT-to-MP3 website, download it and voila, I could listen to those songs whenever I wanted. My method eventually evolved. I had been given enough pocket money to buy a reasonable amount of cellular data and I started using Discord bots(yes - Groovy, Rythm, Fred, you name it). The process was quite simple, I had to join a voice channel, execute a command (occasionally involving keyword like -p "seandainya vierra"), and that’s it. I could enqueue other songs, loop a queue or a track, and even pause it. The main difference was I had to know in advance what song I wished to play, but meh it was just a minor inconvenience compared to copying, pasting, and clicking a lot of buttons.

Encore!

Things completely changed when I decided to try Spotify. It brought a groundbreaking change in my music-listening activity. It was a pandemic season back then and all of my classes in Senior High School were held online. Boy, oh boy, I listened to music every time I used my laptop/PC. I didn’t even care if it was an exam, very important learning session or just a seminar, whatever happened, I thought I was okay if I wear my earphone with music blasting to my ears. I was hardwired to double-click Spotify on my desktop whenever I open my device, plug in an earphone, and start jamming. Even better (so I thought), Spotify has this fantastic recommendation feature where I could find songs similar to those in my playlist, how cool is that?

Change of Heart

Over the years, I became aware that I had been more emotional, agitated, and unable to keep my focus for an extended amount of time (I still can’t even focus without my pomodoro timer). Aside from doom-scrolling, I hypothesized that excessively listening to music caused it. Therefore, I decided to take a break, for an indefinite amount of time. It has been about 1 month now and…I do feel a little bit better. I can hear what other people talk about without asking them to repeat it and I have never been feeling this calm. Whenever the urge creeps into my head, I divert it by listening to podcasts, and white noise. I am planning to continue on because well…it keeps getting better day by day.

Change of Heart Number 2

Edit on 17th June 2025 I WAS WRONG. IT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA. SORRY GUYS. During about 2 months to my music abstinence, I went bonkers. I’m so tired because of my internship and thesis and I don’t have any short form of entertainment. Now I want to share to a few songs I like to listen toAdd commentMore actions

  • “Jika Bersamamu” by Timun Jelita, also read the novel, it’s funny
  • “EVERYTHING” by The Black Skirts
  • “Aruarian Dance” by Nujabes
  • “What Is Love?” by TWICE (yes)
  • “Kembali Bertahan” by Ungu (heck yeah, I would rather be a SATRIA GARUDA than dating one of JKT48’s member)