Music isn't always good for you. We’re taught that art heals, that a good melody is a soul-balm, and that "losing yourself" in a song is the goal of every Saturday night. But Michael Clune suggests something much darker. In his 2024 book Pan, Clune—a writer who previously tackled the terrifying mechanics of addiction in White Out—turns his clinical, unsettlingly sharp gaze toward the way we consume music. It’s not a celebration. It’s a post-mortem of the human ear.
Honestly, most music criticism is boring because it talks about how a record makes someone feel. Clune doesn't care about your feelings. He cares about what the music is doing to your brain’s hardware.
The Problem With Getting Exactly What You Want
The core of Pan by Michael Clune is the "Pan" itself—a fictionalized or perhaps metaphorical technology that allows for a perfect, infinite loop of musical climax. Imagine the best part of your favorite song. Not the buildup, not the verse, but that one three-second window where the harmony hits just right and the hair on your arms stands up. Now, imagine a world where you can stay in that three-second window forever.
It sounds like heaven. It’s actually a lobotomy.
Clune argues that our modern digital infrastructure is basically a prototype for this. We are moving toward a state of "total music," where the friction of listening—the boredom, the silence between tracks, the songs we don't quite like—is being engineered out of existence. When you remove the "bad" parts of experience, you don't just get a life of pure joy. You get a flatline.
He’s talking about the death of the "aesthetic experience." If you’re always at the peak, the peak ceases to exist. It’s a terrifyingly logical look at how our obsession with dopamine-optimization is ruining our ability to actually perceive art. You’ve probably felt this yourself. You scroll through Spotify, skip thirty songs in a row because they don't hit the "spot" within the first five seconds, and end up feeling more empty than when you started. That's the Pan.
📖 Related: Coach Bag Animal Print: Why These Wild Patterns Actually Work as Neutrals
Why Michael Clune Writes Like a Scientist of the Soul
Clune is a professor at Case Western Reserve University. He’s an academic, but he writes like someone who has spent a lot of time in very dark rooms. In Pan, his prose is jagged. It’s intentional. He wants to wake you up from the hypnotic trance of the "feed."
There is a specific scene in the book where he describes the physical sensation of a sound that doesn't end. It’s described with the kind of precision usually reserved for medical textbooks or crime scene reports. He’s obsessed with the idea of the "virtual." To Clune, music has become a virtual reality that we use to escape the actual reality of our bodies.
But our bodies eventually revolt.
The book isn't just about headphones and playlists. It’s a broader critique of how we’ve outsourced our internal lives to external loops. Whether it's a 15-second TikTok sound or a 10-hour ambient YouTube video designed for "deep focus," we are increasingly living in a world of curated stimuli. Clune’s point is that this kills the subject. If the music is doing all the work of feeling for you, what is left of "you"?
The Horror of the Infinite Loop
Most people think of horror as a monster under the bed. In Pan by Michael Clune, the horror is a perfect C-major chord that never resolves.
👉 See also: Bed and Breakfast Wedding Venues: Why Smaller Might Actually Be Better
There’s a concept in music theory called "tension and release." You need the dissonance to appreciate the harmony. Clune suggests that we are currently living through a historical moment where we are trying to abolish tension. We want the release, 24/7.
- We want the "vibe" without the effort.
- We want the "hook" without the song.
- We want the "result" without the process.
This creates a kind of "aesthetic addiction." Just like his earlier work on heroin, Clune draws a straight line between the way a drug hijacks the brain’s reward system and the way a perfectly engineered pop song does the same. It’s "Pan" as a pharmacological agent. It’s music as a drug that eventually stops working, leaving the user in a state of permanent craving for a sensation they can no longer feel.
It’s a grim outlook, but it feels undeniably true when you look at the state of the attention economy. We are being fed "Pan" every day. The algorithm is the delivery mechanism.
Moving Beyond the "Vibe" Economy
So, how do we actually fight back against the "Pan"? Clune doesn't give us a simple self-help checklist. He’s too smart for that. But through the narrative, he hints at the necessity of difficulty.
Art that is hard to listen to—art that is "ugly" or "boring" or "strange"—is the only thing that keeps us human. It forces us to stay present. It prevents the brain from slipping into that easy, automated loop of pure pleasure.
✨ Don't miss: Virgo Love Horoscope for Today and Tomorrow: Why You Need to Stop Fixing People
If you want to escape the trap Michael Clune describes, you have to intentionally seek out things that don't immediately "satisfy" you. You have to learn to sit with the silence. You have to listen to the whole album, even the tracks you don't like.
Actionable Steps for the "Post-Pan" Listener
- Delete the "Made For You" Playlists: For one week, stop letting the algorithm choose your music. Pick an album based on the cover, a recommendation from a real human, or a random Wikipedia entry.
- The "Full Album" Rule: Listen to a record from start to finish without skipping a single track. If it gets boring, let it be boring. Notice what your brain does when it isn't being constantly stimulated.
- Physical Media Intervention: Buy a record, a CD, or even a cassette. The physical friction of having to flip a disc or wait for a rewind breaks the "infinite stream" mental model.
- Active Listening Practice: Sit in a chair. Do nothing else. No phone, no cleaning, no driving. Just listen to one song. Try to isolate the bass line or the literal breath of the singer.
Pan is a warning. It’s a brilliant, scary, and deeply necessary look at what happens when we finally get what we’ve always wanted: a world where the music never stops and the "good part" lasts forever. As Clune shows, that’s not a dream. It’s a nightmare.
Read the book. Then, for the love of God, turn off your phone and sit in silence for ten minutes. Your brain will thank you.
The Path Forward
To truly understand the implications of Pan, you should look into Michael Clune's earlier memoir, White Out. It provides the necessary context for his obsession with the "frozen moment" of the high. Following that, exploring the works of music critics like Mark Fisher (specifically Ghosts of My Life) can help bridge the gap between Clune’s philosophical horror and the reality of our current cultural stagnation.