The first time I encountered the concept of chain letters I was eleven years old. An envelope containing a badly degenerated photocopied letter found its way into my hands. The letter asked me to post copies of it to twenty friends, claiming that it had been in circulation for years and years. There was palpable excitement when I read it, followed closely by a strong sense of solemn responsibility. I made twenty copies and sent them on the very next day. Since then, and especially since the internet’s popularity surged in the mid-nineties, I have stared down the business end of a thousand such solicitations. Chain letters and memes have been flowing in from all directions, enticing me to perpetuate them, sometimes with promises of untold love and prosperity, sometimes with threats of joblessness, disfigurement, and general unpleasantness, to be brought on by some unspecified divinity, an ethereal karmic clerk of sorts, monitoring my email, tallying up my responses, and dispensing rewards and curses accordingly. My reaction to these missives from the unknown was excitement, originally, then responsibility, then guilt, then annoyance, then indifference. As their number increased, I increased the sensitivity of my filters, and chain letters and memes dipped below the noise threshold. If they are chain letters, I delete them, in defiance of the karmic clerk; if they’re memes, I ignore them.

But a few days ago, Elfie tagged me with a music-related LiveJournal meme:

List seven songs that you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

This piqued my interest because I couldn’t think of an answer. I should be able to name seven songs that have appealed to me recently, right? And yet I couldn’t. Considering this, I was shocked to realise that I don’t listen to much music at all recently. My commutes are short, so I don’t bother using my iPod. I no longer work in an office or studio, so I have no control of the background music. But I have been listening to music on occasion, and thanks to the iTunes play counter, I can now give you a definitive list of the most played songs in my library recently:

1. Devendra Banhart: At the Hop
2. The G/9 Group: Alegria, alegria
3. Joe Dassin: Je change un peu de vent
4. Marxy: Neoplasticism vs. De Stijl
5. As Meninas: Para-ráio
6. Charles Trénet: La mer
7. Etta Scollo: I tuoi fiori

I am not going to tag anyone with this. If you feel like mentioning songs you enjoy on your blogs or in the comments, go right ahead. See if I care. I have to go listen to some more music.

Happy new year!