The ECI Philosophy

     I’m writing now only in response to something I heard a few days ago (last week?). Someone mentioned that s/he thought my show might be cool because — pace the show’s name — s/he thought it was a great idea to play music that would help people fall asleep.

     Wow.

insert befuddled scratching of head and the thought that some may understand eci to mean emi, where the “m” stands for medicine, as in a palliative.

     What I intend could not be further from either description.

     As succinctly as possible and without coming off as morbid, I’ll explain what I’m trying to do: I’m playing music to die by. Before you start getting huffy thinking I am encouraging or valorizing suicide, I’ll say that my aim is to do something quite different, something that in the end is about affirming the value and pleasure of living — the preciousness of each moment. In short, the show comes down to a question that I ask of each song I program: If you knew this were the last thing you were ever going to hear, would you still listen to it?