Blog1 min read
Music for sitting in a parked car
The car isn't moving, so there's no road to support; but you're also not anywhere. A specific kind of company.
There's a particular hour you sometimes spend sitting in a parked car. Waiting for someone to come out of a shop. Arriving fifteen minutes early. Killing time before the next thing. The car is yours, the engine is off, and the music keeps playing because the car still has battery.
The brief is different from music for a drive. The car isn't moving, so there's no road to support; but you're also not anywhere — you can't read a book or do work. Lo-fi works because it asks nothing. Wellness works if you have your eyes closed. Anything dynamic feels strange because the windows aren't moving.
What this hour tolerates well is repetition. A short loop you've already heard works because the boredom of waiting isn't asking for entertainment; it's asking for company. The radio is sometimes better than the streaming app here, for the same reason — radio gives the room a someone-else-is-here feeling that streaming doesn't.
By the time the person comes out of the shop, the hour has been short or long depending on what you played. The right music makes a fifteen-minute wait feel like four minutes. The wrong music makes it feel like an hour, and you'll remember the wait when you don't remember the day around it.