“What we later consider to have been there in front of us all the time is invisible to use before it is distinguished–we could say that the act of distinction ‘theres’ it.”
Henri Bortoft, Taking Appearance Seriously
Introduction
In the last post, I talked about following pulls. I’m going to build on that here, and discuss how following pulls naturally leads to the creation of distinctions (this is the second step in the expressive playlisting process). I will explore the distinguishing process in depth in this post, and provide examples to show how it gives rise to playlists. Finally, I will discuss why this is a self-expressive process (hence the name “expressive” playlisting), and how playlist curation can be a practice for connecting with deeper levels of who you are.
The Activity of Distinguishing
The process of following a pull inevitably leads to the emergence of a distinction. To say you’re drawn to song Y rather than song Z is to divide up some part of reality on the basis of your felt response to it. Y becomes foregrounded for you, and Z recedes into the background.
This distinction arises naturally as a byproduct of the process of moving toward what draws you (which again, is simultaneously a moving away from that which does not).
As you repeat this process over time, you begin building up a category of “songs that pull me.” Each song that grabs you goes into this group. This is a primary distinction.
Next, you begin noticing differences in what pulls you within the songs you’ve collected. This results in a second level of distinctions.
You realize that you like some of these songs because of an aspect of the production that appeals to you; something about how thick and sharply defined the sounds are and the richness of detail in the textures. You notice that not all of the songs in your “songs that pull me” category have this quality. As you become aware of this, these particular songs group together for you and separate from the other songs which lack this quality. This distinction gives rise to a playlist theme—you take these songs out and give them their own playlist. In my own case, that playlist was Pop Textures.
You return to the collection of songs that pull you and explore again. You notice that some others in this group share a rhythmic quality that you love. Here it’s not about the production, as in the first grouping, but about the rounded, looping quality of the groove. When you listen to these songs, the spontaneous movement of your body is a giveaway that something is different about them: they make you bounce. The imagery arising as you listen to these songs is different too. It’s laid-back, flowing and rounded, in contrast to other songs that give rise to more forward-leaning, snappy and angular imagery. You’ve made another distinction here. You separate these songs out and give them their own playlist. This is how the playlist Lilt emerged for me.
As you repeat the steps above, more and more distinctions emerge. Through this process you are creating your own categories as a music listener—categories that develop organically out of your own personal pull-following process. Because these distinctions emerge from within your own personal experiencing of the world—versus being taught to you by someone else—I call them endogenous distinctions.
Endogenous Distinctions
Endogenous distinctions start out implicit in your experiencing as a felt sense of direction. You feel a “pull” toward this song rather than that song. As you follow this pull, the global domain of “songs” gets divided up for you, initially into “like” vs “dislike” and then into finer categories as you follow nested pulls within the realm of what you like.
The categories emerging from this process become explicit as they are noticed and labeled. They become like “things” in a way. You can talk about them. You can build playlists around them. If you look at the 20+ playlists I’ve created, you can see what this process looks like after its developed over the course of a couple years. Each grew out of paying this kind of close attention to what I most loved in the songs I was drawn to.
Exogenous distinctions, by contrast, are already explicit when you first encounter them. They are part of the common stock of knowledge in a given culture. For these reasons, they can be taught to you by someone else.
A straight-forward example of an exogenous distinction would be the division of an insect into head, thorax and abdomen. This three-part distinction did not arise from your interested personal engagement with insects. It had already become part of “objective knowledge” before you came into the world and was taught to you in grade school. You were born into a world in which such distinctions had already been made; socialization was a process of learning to see the world in this way.
Because of the way exogenous distinctions entered your consciousness, they seem objective, as if they are “really there” in the world. But they are arbitrary in the sense that there are many ways to divide up the world conceptually, depending on what you want to do with it. For an interesting discussion of this last point, check out this video.
So to summarize: the act of moving towards what draws us results in the branching of our experiential world into two categories: “what pulls me” and “what does not.” This is an initial distinction. As I then give attention to what pulls me, I continue the distinguishing process, noticing, for example, that “these three songs go together” and are different from the rest in some way. What I’m responding to in these three songs is a quality they all share—for me—which seems different from the qualities in the other songs I like. This is another distinction, and one that leads to the creation of a themed playlist.
The playlists come into being in the act of grouping songs together in this way. The decision about how to group the songs grows out of your personal feeling response to the songs. It’s not done on the basis of extrinsic factors like “These are all synthpop songs” or “These all have a BPM of 130.” It’s more like “when I hear these songs, I get the feeling/image of something opening up within me and ascending.”
To repeat: the grouping is done on the basis of your experiencing of the song and the feelings and images that arise within you as you listen to it. You’re clarifying what, specifically, in the song is pulling you, and you’re building the playlist around that.
All this grouping and separating is essentially a process of distinguishing. Because the distinctions you are making grow out of your own personal experiencing of the music—because you are the one creating them—I’m calling them endogenous distinctions. They differ from most distinctions we encounter in everyday life which come from outside of us and which we learn. The distinction “Jazz” vs “Classical” is an exogenous distinction because these categories did not grow out of our personal experiencing of music—they preceded us and we internalized them from the surrounding culture.
Distinctions Reveal What’s Important to Us
There’s an important point I want to add here: the act of distinguishing implies the concerns of the distinguisher. In the case of exogenous distinctions, the concerns of a given subculture shape how something is classified and therefore what it “is.”
“What we call things and where we draw the line between one class of things and another depend upon the interests we have and the purposes of the classification. For example, animals are classified in one way by the meat industry, in a different way by the leather industry, in another different way by the fur industry, and in a still different way by the biologist. None of these classifications is any more final than any of the others; each of them is useful for its purpose.”
S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought
In the case of endogenous distinctions emerging from pull-following, what gets foregrounded through the process of distinguishing and naming is that which is of concern to you as a unique individual soul. It’s what is of interest to you when all your practical concerns have been bracketed out1. These are categories (in this case, “playlists”) that grow out of your own highly personal, emotionally-charged engagement with the world and reflect your own distinct patterns of responding when free of requirements, coercion and obligation. Because of this freedom, your unique style as a person shines through more clearly in these playlists. If you want to catch a glimpse of the deeper unity of you—the you behind the ego that interfaces with the social world, the you that is more like an unfolding process with its own distinct shape and character2, look at the library of playlists that you’ve created in this way.
Conclusion
In this post I’ve discussed the connection between following pulls and making distinctions, and I’ve identified two types of distinctions: endogenous distinctions which grow out of your experiencing of the world, and exogenous distinctions which emerged from someone else’s experiencing of the world and were taught to you. I’ve described how the activity of distinguishing organically gives rise to categories. And finally, I’ve suggested that paying attention to the themes that emerge from this process of following pulls, distinguishing, and creating your own categories—specific playlists in the case of expressive playlisting—may be a way to catch a glimpse of your unique style as an individual, the dynamic “you” beyond your self-concept.
Notes
- These concerns are “bracketed out” because the pull following process is intrinsically motivated, as mentioned in an earlier post. We follow the pull not because others will think we are cool, or our boss will give us a raise, or it will improve our credit rating. We follow what we are drawn to for no reason other than it draws us. Distinctions arising from such pull-following are therefore not directly influenced by extrinsic concerns. ↩︎
- For more on these notions of individual “style” or “character” see the work of the psychologist James Hillman, especially The Soul’s Code and The Force of Character ↩︎
Last Updated on March 26, 2025
