The Importance of Being Idle

Sunday is probably the best day of the week or the worst day of the week, depending on your age and occupation. If you're a student, it's probably the worst. You won't get up until early afternoon, you won't enjoy your first meal of the day, and then you will spend the rest of the day reading Xeroxed primary source documents and re-erasing the same sentence of your half-formed essay. Due the next day.

If you're a young, working professional, it probably isn't that bad. Maybe you get up mid-late morning, enjoy a nice breakfast, and acquire a copy of the Sunday Times and pick through it. Maybe you do a little work so your Monday won't be so bad, have an early dinner, and call your parents. Play with the kids.

If you're a little older, maybe Sunday is the day you do some work around the house--fix the handle on the door, clean out the garage, do some wood work in the shed. Cook. Spring cleaning. To relax, maybe you do the crossword, watch sports or movies. If you are so inclined, no matter your age and occupation, perhaps you go to church. Twice, even.

The key to Sunday, in all of the above scenarios, is relaxation. Because in the end you need to save your strength. Tomorrow is Monday.

Great thing about church: You can sit down for much of the service (though some will require standing) and relax and digest your breakfast and do some reading from the holy text and just let the sermon wash over you The first Sunday church services were probably planned with these things in mind. Perfect Sunday activity.

Even if you're staring at a blank laptop monitor in a dark corner of your school library, you need to take your time, think the paper through, and begin typing, slowly, because you can't work quickly on a Sunday. You just can't. In my experience, college kids don't even bother to get out of their pajamas on Sundays.

If you're working around the house, do it slowly. There will be plenty of time for rushing during the week.

In all of the above scenarios, the danger of being bored is always just around the corner, and boredom isn't relaxing. It's stressful. One of the best ways I know how to avoid boredom while remaining calm and relaxed is ambient music.

The ambient music I'm speaking of is often called "electronic," a useless, non-descriptive tag often assigned to music that is generated with live instrumentation. You know this music quite well, even if you've never paid attention to it. If you've ever been to a Starbucks, an outlet in Freeport, a slightly upscale restaurant, or tuned into your local radio station on Sunday, you've been exposed. It comes under different guises: "Putamayo," "new jazz," "world music," "chill out."

This music is often ridiculed as "wallpaper music." To quote Simon Cowell, "It's there, you notice it," but its impact is fleeting. It does not inspire and it does not offend, and we've come to learn that this is a bad thing. This is a criticism leveled at groups like Thievery Corporation, and that is what makes Thievery Corporation perfect for Sunday. A time for everything under the sun.

On Sunday, no one likes to be bothered, and this often goes for music, as well.

Sunday is about maintaining positive frame of mind in preparation for Monday, and The Richest Man in Babylon, a prototypical "chill out" album that does not inspire and does not offend, can help you. Wants to help you. There is one moment, "Omid (Hope)," which is indicative of the rest: It's a supplement for . . . whatever you need on Sundays. It will add extra flavor to your coffee and omelet, it will soundtrack the Arts section of the Times, it will soundtrack your scenic drive to church, your morning jog; it will put you in a relaxed but vaguely stimulated frame of mind to begin unhurried work on that History paper or that novel or that wood you're sanding down.

Why this album as opposed to any other? Because one song is indistinguishable from the next. If you put it on "repeat," several hours may pass before you even notice, the songs all running together in one endless loop of otherworldly flavor, and this is a perfectly acceptable way to pass a Sunday.

People may tell you that this music is emotionless and disposable, that if it's playing in GAP stores around the country then it must be devoid of any value as music. They're probably right, too.

But who are they to say? They do not get to make these decisions for you or I. The music is there for whichever purpose we see fit, and sometimes, as on Sundays, just being there is enough.