I’ve been trying to figure out when exactly it was that Meaningwave first splashed into my life, and I’m sure a throughout enough digging on my Last.FM profile would be enough to help me pinpoint how exactly it all came to fruition. Every once in a while I fall into a musical lull, whereas all the things that are listed as my “favorites” in regards to my Last.FM statistics don’t even sound remotely appealing, nor do its sonically-related contemporaries.
It was during one of these lulls that I first stumbled upon things like Chilled Cow and some of the other live Lofi channels on YouTube. I’m such a fucking music nerd, so I’m hearing something that sounds great I try and catch the artist/trackname so I can throw it on a playlist at some point. I fell deeply in love with Lofi and it was by mere accident that Akira the Don got tossed in front of me. Back then I had started created my own compiled Lofi playlist on Spotify but they were not all that long so Spotify would often start throwing its own suggestions at me and I’m listening one day and I’m all mindblown because I’m thinking to myself “this really sounds like Alan Watts” but I was deep into work so I couldn’t fuck off and look at my phone. Took mental note of the time and dug into my Last.FM history after work. Sure enough, this guy named Akira the Don.
If you popped open your favorite GIF search engine and typed OMG the total sum of those GIFs wouldn’t quite put into place the look I had on my face when I first looked at Akira’s Spotify discography. It was a like a whos who of every popular speech-maker and lecturer I had admired since admiring such people began. At first, I was most impressed by Alan Watts and his version of the “This is Water” commencement speech.
Music is on in my world 90% of the time and absolutely always at work. The only time music would be paused is if I’m watching something on YouTube. And more often than not, a Podcast or a video by Jordan Peterson, some slideshow imagery of Alan Watts with some clickbaitey title, so when this notion of Meaningwave came to me, in my eyes it is quite literally the greatest idea in a very long time.
I’ve shared so much of his music with so many people, and I’ve had people at work say “what is this?” or recognize someone’s voice and ask where it’s from (Rogan, Elon, Jocko). To call his work under-appreciated or underrated does not even scratch the surface. So many of his tracks are quintessential to my love for music and despite what Goggins might say about music and motivation, it is truly important for his music to be a part of my life, pulling me out of dark places I can’t out of on my own.
His work is what made me create a Patreon account for the first time, which is some of the best money I spend every month. Every once in a while one of his tracks introduce me to a new speech or podcast that I need to look deeper into, or completely learn stuff about that I prior to, knew little or nothing of (shoutout User Interface of Reality).
I could go on and on about, the positive benefits I have personally had by way of Meaningwave. There is one “negative” trait tho, however, if I may be so bold to make an observation. I have quite a diverse musical taste and always sort of have been. When you ask the surface-level question of “What type of music do you like?” and someone gives you that bullshit answer of “everything”, I like to smash those people over the head with questions about Tom Waits or start talking about Classical music. Since I have started really listening to Meaningwave a lot, I’ve noticed that I’ve really got on a different set of ears now when I listen to other types of music. It’s almost like the presence of Meaningwave in my life has brought to the forefront the “hidden agendas” of other types of music, be it for the good or bad.