Friday Playlists: Ambient Whispers

After a Thanksgiving spent on one of the most intense psychedelic experiences of his life, Adam offers the tranquility of his favorite ambient music

AMBIENT WHISPERS PLAYLIST

We had a great Thanksgiving party last night, small gathering with my best friends, and my wife made a beautiful meal. My friend brought LSD, for some reason, and I decided to take some. Last time he’d given me LSD it was pretty mellow. This time, however, I got absolutely blasted. I took a 1/4 of a hit. We were watching the episode of the Sopranos when Tony killed Chrissy and then goes to Vegas and takes peyote. Tony’s psychedelic insight compelled me to take more acid, so I took another piece from the sheet. Big, big mistake, or at least it felt like a mistake during the experience. It seemed like no more than 10 minutes before I was wracked with “the fear,” with beautiful and strange visual distortions all around me.

I went deep into my own psychology, and I felt like, for a brief moment, that I could see myself. I realized, in some deep way, that I truly need to stop sweating the small stuff. That people’s media opportunism and petty in-group squabbles were ultimately meaningless to engage with. I came face to face with my predilection towards resentment, and I didn’t like what I saw. I wouldn’t say I have any more sympathy for cowards, but it’s more that I intuited that I need to stop being so driven by my base emotions.

2025 will by my year, I think, as long as I can rid myself of these petty grievances. I have good things in my life, things to cherish. To build something bigger, I need to focus more on those things, and much less than on my anger, jealousy, and tendency towards contempt.

Obviously, sleep was hard to come by last night. In need of tranquility, I turned towards ambient music, something which I could drift into and ease my neurosis. With the help of the lush landscapes of Asmus Tietchens, Eno, Stars of the Lid, Aphex Twin in ambient mode, Fennesz, and others, my neurosis started to break down and the fear transmuted into clarity and insight. I feel amazing today.