the intimidation of aux

This past week for Thanksgiving break I was in Kansas City, where I lived for my entirety of High School and saw a couple of friends from home. Now I currently don't have a car anymore, so I would get picked up by my friends and this truly inspired me of what to write about this week. The most daunting thing I get told when I get in someone else's car, "do you want aux?" Even when I was the one driving I would almost always hand aux off to whichever friend got in my car.

taken by me in my friend's car

Hence the title of this piece, aux is so intimidating to me, but a lot of people don't relate to it or also don't understand it. So I've decided to write a little piece about why aux is so intimidating to me. Now this isn't just for driving with friends from High School that I've felt this, and it isn't even having different music taste sometimes it's vaguely similar, or half the songs that come on are also on my playlists. It happens with my friends at college too, we'll be going on a drive on lake shore, or hanging out somewhere and have music playing in the background and sometimes I get asked if I want aux, and my answer is always no. Sometimes I'll ask for a few songs to be queued, but that's the closest I'll get. I listen to my own playlists in the comfort of being alone, but very rarely around others.

My reason for being intimidated by aux could be attributed to a couple of different things, but the main thing for me is how much pressure it is honestly. My main fear is not fitting the vibe or the mood that everyone else is looking for, mainly because a lot of what I listen to falls within the idea of doom and despair. So imagine having a good night with friends driving and enjoying being alive and then "Back to me" by the Marías or like "pushing it down and praying," by Lizzy McAlpine or something like that starts playing, that would be the ultimate mood killer. I have a lot of respect while also being baffled by my friends who prefer and ask to be on aux. The amount of pressure there is on them to curate a perfect playlist or queue to match the exact vibe that everyone is feeling is absolutely terrifying. I'm sometimes even afraid of just asking for a song to be queued, but I still do if I think it matches the vibes of everything else that was playing.

Despite the pressure sometimes I just like my music just for me, and not even in a gatekeeping sense, I just like to listen to what I like and my own playlists alone. But another issue of mine that I have with aux has to do with my playlists. I don't exactly have many playlists, I just have one big playlist with everything I like that adds to over 40 hours long and every couple months I make a new one taking some of the songs on the last one with other songs. So honestly if you hit shuffle on my playlist you have no idea what is about to come on. In my car I used to hit shuffle and whatever came on set my mood for the day which was a dangerous game to play. Or I would have a couple songs in mind that I had been listening to a lot that are stuck in my head so I had them queued. When I've had aux with one another person in the car I've truly been called out for how quickly I skip songs because of how much there is on my playlist and the vibe switches so quick within each song that plays. But honestly I just hate making playlists because I'm too indecisive I wouldn't be able to pick which one I want to listen to. So I leave it up to fate to decide what I listen to by hitting shuffle on one collective playlist. But doing that in front of other people isn't always what the vibe is and not what everyone does, so I just steer clear from aux all together.

taken by me in KC

Now at times if there's only one other person with me I might consider having aux, or if I'm in my room and I play a CD I typically am the one who picks it. But that's the closest I'll get to it. My indecisiveness may also have something to do with my intimidation. Not only is there pressure of what to play, but you pick the mood essentially with whatever you choose to play. And I don't want that decision to be up to me, especially when there's more than one person. You have to curate this queue that pleases everybody while also perfecting it for the setting, like doing homework in a room or going for a late night drive. There's so many factors to take into consideration, and it's too many for me to want to be relied on.

Aux is a frightening thought to me, and build this sense of pressure so much it's intimidating. So for now, and for the foreseeable future, I'll leave the job of having aux to somebody else.

-AC