Complicated Compilation Conflagration

I was IMing with my good friend, Death, the other day. She's in "luff", not quite love, not quite distain, but something distinctly inbetween. She was curious about my collection of music and was a little concerned that she wasn't keeping up with the stuff that is A) current and B) elicits an emotional response. Understand I am a highly emotional creature who is unwilling to ever take nullifying or remotely numbing drugs to stave off any of these emotions; feeling, or rather, intensely feeling things is kind of a strange mandate for me. Also understanding Music is my Boyfriend, she asked me to compile a Best of List as chosen by Sunshine (my nickname). She wanted me to compile a list because this music I listen to, am drawn towards, get introduced to regularly by the internet, friends, being in the right time at the right place, makes me utterly and completely *feel*.

Often it's cathartic; there's something bubbling just below the surface that wants desperately to come out, but has no real venue. Sometimes there is a succession of notes and bars that escalate, build, reward in such delicious ways that hope springs eternal, my heart resonates and tears stream down my face. Mogwai's Hunted by a Freak does that to me.

Sometimes it's a set of lyrics that seem so poignant at one particular moment of pathetic desperation, like Keane's She Has No Time:

You think your days are uneventful
And no one ever thinks about you
She goes her own way
She goes her own way

You think your days are ordinary
That no one thinks about you
But, we're all the same
But she can't hardly breathe without you...

And I'm trying, really trying not to have tears ruin what I've attempted to achieve with my mascara wand.

I really loved that Stevie Wonder had named that beautiful double album Songs in the Key of Life and that Dick Clark had appropriated pop music as the "Soundtrack of our Lives". But tastes are so individual. And the directions we go in, in our musical bents, are as individual as we are.

I'd read Dr. Phil's Relationship Rescue book a couple of years ago when I was trying to salvage my marriage. Great book, really. Did it help? Well... no, not really. In it, Phil had said this marvellous thing which will probably always stay with me. Talking about the interactions of men and women and how it was impossible to read the minds of the other person, he said, paraphrasing now, as I'd lent the book out to a friend who needed rescue with his own relationship: We don't share the same history, physiology, or sex as the other person... How are we to inherently understand one another?

But the not sharing the same history thing really stuck with me. That is what irrevocably makes us singular and unique. No one shares our same history. Something else I'd read somewhere, probably in a bathroom stall, was: We are changed by every person we meet, every movie we see, every book we read, essentially every new experience informs us and changes us... slightly.

Months ago I was asked to compile a Top 20 music list, which I did. I did so for a young man who was interested in getting to know me better. During the process I discovered I really got to know myself better. This was the Top 20 of All Time. Not just a current thing. I was incredibly tempted to put in The Bay City Rollers' Saturday Night, but chickened out, as it were.

Looking at it now, it seems, well... dated.

I was talking to Ack, sometimes referred to as Peenut, sometimes referred to as "her", the ex-husband/still best friend, about our friend David, who is with wife and 2 kids, who doesn't know about any new music right now. He stopped paying attention when he stopped working on music videos. Commerce again. He enjoys new music. He's often found pounding his palms against any remotely flat surface when something sweet is playing, which is often the case with both myself and Ack. David stopped caring about it, though. His life became something else. The experiences of both marriage and family informed him that certain luxuries like being alone with music were a bit too extravagent. That, and the only time he's actually alone occurs only when he's taking an extend-o-crap.

Then there's Dirty, one of my best girlfriends, who is too busy with work to find new music to listen to. She sometimes listens to... the radio. Not internet radio... just plain corporately structured, mass produced shit *they* want us to listen to. Buy. Consume. House music... the tempo of today for the people of today: frenetic mice on wheels.

All of these people, and more, have asked me to compile lists for them. Just about every one of them has placed a stipulation upon such a list. Omissions. "Don't put any Interpol on. No Polyphonic Spree hippy shit, thanks. Spandau Ballet? Are you nuts?" In essence, what it is is not wishing to see a through-line of where I'd been to lead me to where I am; a chronology, I guess. It struck me as more of the same of what's going on these days of people having less time and wanting more but reduced. Concentrated. With the empty promise of reconstitution later. No Pulp. Pulp was in the 90's.

So as I'm thinking now, what these people need is to create a little more time for themselves to explore new music. Maybe compile their own goddamned lists. One really can't explore much if it's heard at a party, with conversation. It takes away from the experience. We're always trying to do several things at the same time, to save time. But does it really save time? For what?

Compiling lists is fine. Personally, I'd love to hear my friends individual lists, not for any other reason than to try to understand them a bit more. And of course there'd be a new discovery along the way. I don't regret doing it back in the summer for my friend, because he honestly and earnestly wanted to know me better. That's a good reason. But to do it just so someone else can have the benefit of your own treasure hunt, to maybe elicit the same responses for themselves, which takes years and different histories, just for the reduction? The quick fix?

As LL Cool J once said, "No, I don't think so."