My brother once lived down the hall from two guys who were music guys. They had a wall of compact discs, neatly arranged. One February, for no apparent reason, they put all of the CDs in the closet
—
except for 13 or so Tom Waits albums, lined up on the mantle. After a few weeks of listening exclusively to Waits, they resumed their omnivorous listening habits. Waits acted as a palate cleanser, allowing them to care about new sounds once more. When I’m tired of movies, or music, or television, or books, I follow their strategy and rely on certain touchstones to get me interested again:
,
,
. Am I alone in this? Send me your cultural palate cleansers at
michaelagger1 at gmail dot com
.
