Close My Eyes and Believe Wherever You Are, An Angel For Me

It's funny how things that could seemingly be very frustrating have a way of dredging up these long forgotten memories of the way things once were.

Recently, I accidentally deleted all of the music off of my iPod. (If you want a full explanation of how I committed this blunder, feel free to ask, but I thought that I would spare everyone the details.) After losing about 16 gigs of music, I had to call up my parents in order to retrieve my CDs from home in order to reload the pod. Shuffling CDs in and out of a computer might seem like a tedious process, but it has been an interesting look back at how my life has changed through the music that I have listened to.

The abbreviated time line looks something like this:

• Circa 1995--DC Talk's Jesus Freak and Hootie and the Blowfish's Cracked Rear View were the first two albums that I owned. I'm not sure which one was the first, but I still remember playing both of these albums to death on my Sony boom box. If you are laughing out there, just remember that I was in 5th/6th grade during this time.
  
• Circa 2000-Around my sophomore/junior years of high school I became borderline obsessive with the Dave Matthews Band. I could tell you the length of "Lie in Our Graves" from the Live in Chicago release and what exactly Dave meant in "Crash Into Me". This period of musical exploration peaked with my trip to see DMB in May 2002 just before I graduated from high school.
  
• Circa 2003/2004-My freshman and sophomore years in college were marked by my foray into the world of Phish. You would be shocked to know that this period of discovery was not aided or enhanced by any type herbal supplements. I grew to love the music of Phish because it was blissfully chaotic. The idea of playing without a net and knowing that the greatest music that the band ever composed was not written on any piece of paper, but existed only in those moments of live exploration are what still endear me to Phish 2 years after their retirement.
  
• Circa 2005/2006-This period has been marked by my move into a time of appreciation of bands like Wilco and the songwriting ability of artists like Mason Jennings. The music is a bit more somber than my musical past, but I think that is beginning to reflect my growing introspective nature and what it means to struggle with yourself and the world around you.
  

With that said, I still would choose Phish (assuming they could un-retire) if I had to attend one concert before I died, but the growth of my musical tastes has oddly followed my personal growth from youthful choruses to mournful ballads. I've been reminded this week that music is a special gift and for that I am thankful.

Current Reading

How Soccer Explains the World: An (Unlikely) Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer