1. Prospect Hummer by Animal Collective

2. Do you like this song? Why or why not? Listen to it again, paying careful attention, and make a couple of notes, in sequence, to try and recreate your actual moment-to-moment experience.

Prospect Hummer by Animal Collective is one of my favorite songs. It has this dreamy psychedelic folk vibe. In the introduction of the song leading up to the first verse, I like the way the instruments and vocals have an oscillating effect. The gradual addition of different noises creates a sense of curiosity. The way the song is structured is also really interesting. The first verse has a lot of different things going on musically, but each additional verse becomes less complex.

3. When did you resonate with or feel connections to this song? When did you feel dissonant disconnections? When did you simply stop listening and tune it out? Try to pinpoint the moments in the song where these experiences happen.

I feel pretty connected through the entirety of the song (especially the second verse, which I think has something to do with having a friendship with a cat). The chorus or bridge or whatever is happening between the verses tends to pull me out of the song a little bit, but as soon as another verse starts I feel reconnected.

4. How do you feel when you observe your experience of this song using mindful awareness?

a) How would you describe your emotional reaction (simply identify and name your feelings)?

The whimsical nature of Prospect Hummer puts me in a generally happy state of mind; however, as the song slows down in the last verse I feel traces of sadness.

b) Your physical/ bodily reaction (heart speeding up, foot tapping, head bobbing, chest pounding, grimacing, hands over ears, etc.)?

I found myself breathing more slowly and more deeply than normal. Sometimes I might tap my fingers or my foot at the beginning of the song.

c) Your intellectual reaction (lyrics, singing or humming along, meanings, associations).

I don’t really have an idea of what this song is actually about. The lyrics are pretty weird and the soft singing throughout the song also makes them hard to decipher. I associate this song with traveling, more specifically with camping and hiking.

5.Do you recognize this song or anything about it? What does it remind you of? Write down words that you associate with it.

I don’t think this song takes musical motifs from other artists.

As I mentioned before, the second verse has something to with a relationship with a cat, which is silly. Lyrically, I think that’s the part of the song I feel the most connected to. I grew up with cats and have lived with people who had cats or had a cat of my own throughout college. The human-animal relationship is something that particularly resonated with me.

The first time I ever heard this song was last summer while I was in Oregon, so it brings back a lot of vivid imagery related to that trip. The song in general reminds me of being outdoors, but when I think about it in the context in which I first heard it, I am reminded of being surrounded by mountains and feeling completely dwarfed by nature.