The music doesn't change. You do.
On paper, nothing about my life suggests that music should take up this much space. I'm thirty. A full life, good friends, a job I like, a studio that feels like mine, people I love and who love me.
I've always been like this. One artist when I was little, long after everyone else had moved on. Then another: the lyrics, the photos saved to a folder on my computer I've never shown anyone, the interviews watched until I had them memorised, the music videos on loop, the whole life. Then another. Then another. Each time, the same thing: total immersion, complete attachment, a part of my brain permanently allocated to someone I've never met.
I never called it obsession. I called it loving music.
At some point one of those phases became something else. Longer. Deeper. More present, without even me really noticing. And I still don't know exactly why that one in particular.
I feel music in a way that has always been difficult to explain, and even to myself for a long time. The kind that makes a voice land somewhere in your body before your brain has caught up. That makes you want to know everything: the writing process, the engineering, the why behind every choice. Recognising a song in the first half-second. Recognising a voice in the first few words, before the melody, before the lyrics, just the timbre.
For a long time I thought that was just how everyone experienced it. Then I started paying attention. And I realised it wasn't.
The realisation came slowly. Not from a conversation, not from an article. From the gentle teasing. From cutting conversations short myself, because once I start I can't stop. From realising that the people around me could listen to a song, enjoy it, and move on — while I was still there, noticing the bass line, wanting to know the name, saving it, thinking about it three days later.
Nobody around me was like this. There's something quietly strange about that. Not exactly lonely, just, specific.
So I went looking for that somewhere else. I found one podcast about the psychology behind fandoms, queerbaiting, and parasocial relationships. I was fascinated. So I wanted to learn more. But I didn't find what I was looking for. Not in the content, not in the format. Nothing did quite fit.
I wanted something written from the inside. Personal but researched. Emotional but rigorous.
Notes on LISTENING is what I was looking for.
The publication
This is not about reviews, rankings, or takes. This is what I would have liked to find. It's about what happens underneath.
Notes on Listening is made of personal stories, memories and emotions that sit alongside questions answered by research I've spent hours reading.
Each issue, one theme. Essays, deep cuts, the angle nobody tells, a playlist, an open question and your answers.
Notes on Listening is for people just like me. This is a place to feel less alone in it, whatever your version of "it" is.
Notes on Listening asks why. It's the only question that matters.
Six ways to explore music
Each one has a different angle. Each one a different question worth asking.
Pull up a chair.