I recently found out that music grows on you, when I borrowed someone's 5 favourite songs to listen to, while I worked. I did not quite get it the first time I heard the songs. As I listened to them again and again, I found that I liked them. Especially one of the songs.
They say that the kind of person you are can be determined by the music you listen to. I tried to figure what kind of a person that made him but drew a blank. I have never really had one kind of music I have listened to. Right from listening to the same music that someone else in the family used to listen to (and enjoying them) to following my friends during my growing years, I have never really had a type of music preference. Of course, I have songs that I like and some that I do not but that is about it. That is why the radio works perfectly well for me. Somebody else (the radio jockey) picks a playlist he wants to play from. If it is a call-in program, there are heaps of people making up the playlist for me. If I do not like what they are playing, I can simply switch channels and listen to something else.
My moods also define the kind of music I like. Apparently, being moody and the moods defining music preferences is not a good enough excuse, to tell people that there isn't really one type of music you like. Too bad. They will just have to go without an excuse. I do not have a preference. Period. So, I was quite lost when I received an iPod Nano for my birthday last year. I mean, I loved it! It was my favourite colour and it has a screen too. It looks pretty and it is quite handy. My problem was that I did not quite know what songs to put on it. After a few stressful attempts at trying to pick one playlist or the other and having frustrating moments of not finding the sort of music I wanted to listen to, in my various moods, I decided that I would load the ipod with all sorts of music so that I could pick the songs based on what I felt like listening to. To me, it sounded like a great idea, at the time. Only later did I realize that it is how everyone else does it and I should have done that in the first place.
I have seen people looking at their phones/ipods while listening to music, in trains and buses and wondered why they kept changing their minds and not listen to one playlist. Turns out there is no such thing as one playlist. You fill up the player with thousands of songs that you like. You can fill it up with random songs or ones from other people or just something you have heard somewhere, it does not matter. My theory, that you only need to load it with songs that you really like, was flung out the window, the moment I realized this. Once you have done that, you pick songs that you like as you listen to them, one after another. Now, this is something I find really hard to get. Imagine having to keep choosing songs after each one is over! I like to make a quick list and then just let them play one after another. Having to make a choice again and again would kill me. It would stress me out immensely and take the joy out of listening to music, for me. In fact, I would probably spend more than half my journey on the train trying to pick the song that best suited my mood at the time! How awful would that be?
I guess my biggest problem is that I cannot just listen to music. I can listen to music in the background, while I am doing other things but to just stand or sit and listen to music is something I simply cannot do. I have attempted that in the past and ended up losing myself in a train of thoughts, completely blocking out the music in the bargain. The music player would have long stopped playing and I would have not noticed it at all. So, having to pick a song every 3 minutes or so would never work for me.
So, I stuck with my concept of an auto-scrolling playlist and finally made one, to play in my ipod nano. After having listened to the one fixed playlist for a little while, I got bored. I had to make another one. It was too much hard work and I did not have the time. Thus, the ipod nano was relegated to the background and stayed there for a long while. One day, I decided to get a few songs from a friend who liked 'country music'. I was going to make another attempt at the 'normal' way of listening to music on the ipod. As expected, it did not work for me. The ipod went back to the drawer and has not come out since then.
Yesterday, I got my best friend to list his 5 favourite songs. I have been listening to them since then, along with 5 of my own favourite songs. I would love to have put them in my ipod, to listen to, over the weekend. The only problem with that is that I cannot be bothered with the effort of connecting to a computer, make a list (because inevitably I will try to make a fresh list or organize the music in some way or the other) and refresh the ipod with the new songs. The ipod stayed in it's safe place. In the drawer. For now, online streaming music on my iPad will have to do. Then there is the radio on the iPad.
I'll be a hurricane, ripping up trees...
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