Music

My college boyfriend lives in Brooklyn now. I say that to help illustrate the kind of person he is. At the time, in school, I would have called him emo- he was artsy, kind of dark and bleak. Today? He's called a hipster. 

He was an English major. He played guitar. He smoked. He had amazing hair and a hardened family life. He was also by far, the most handsome guy I'd ever seen. I was crazy in love with him. We were doomed from the start I think, but that didn't stop us from trying. 

He loved this band called Belle and Sebastian and I hated them. But I loved him, so i did what every 20 year old girl would do and I pretended. I pretended to enjoy that whiney sad for the sake of sad music. Out of all the bands he loved Belle and Sebastian were the most commercial and the least irritating so i glommed onto them with all my might to avoid having to listen to anything else with him. What is the point of music you cannot hum along with? I will never understand. 

This weekend I lost my iPod. Now, it was one of the original Shuffles so it is long past time to get an upgrade- but losing it without and prep-time for replacement sucks. I ordered another, but it won't arrive until tomorrow. So this morning I dug out my ancient mp3 player (that, for the record I saved for this exact "just in case" reason) and went for a run. Listening to music that mattered to me 12 years ago is like running thru a time warp. While I will never be sorry to hear Hootie and the Blowfish - the B+S songs caught me off guard a bit. They shouldn't - its been a lifetime since those songs meant anything to me - but they did none the less. It also doesn't help the mood that I run at 5am - everything is more thought provoking when you're still half asleep. 

I do find it an interesting thought that the music I loved then I still liked this morning. Not all of it- I mean, there's only so many times you can listen to Pink's "get it Started" before you want to leap out a window... But in all the ways that I have grown and matured in the last decade - my taste for what I like in music has stayed the same. Is that a bad thing? I'm not sure. I've clearly always been a little adverse to change so It shouldn't e a surprise that that includes my music. 

I read a book a couple years ago called The Happiness Project and the author said something that I hope to never forget. When trying to find your personal happiness she said "you can choose what you do but you cannot choose what you like to do". 

So no more Belle and Sebastian for me thanks. That ship has sailed- I'll stick with poppy fluff music thank you very much.  And show tunes.  Lots of show tunes.