Barometric Pressure....a post about music.

I love music.



I know that everyone says they love music and that they "listen to everything" but I guess I'm going to say it too. I'd like to try to convince you that I really mean it where everyone else just says it, but I have no way to prove it and you'd never know the difference anyway.



Usually I just listen to whatever I feel like. Whatever song pops into my head, or maybe something new that I just heard about and picked up. I use a Creative Zen Jukebox that holds a whole bunch of music, so whenever the urge to listen to something comes up, I've usually got it at my fingertips (that's my endorsement....if you are a Creative executive, please put the check in the mail...make it out to Cash...my best friends call me cash.)



Sometimes though I get uncontrollable urges to listen to something very specific. When this happens, I find that music can act as something of an emotional barometer.



For instance, I always want to hear any Sublime album and Smash Mouth's "Fush Yu Mang" album in the summer. I always want to here Sigur Ros, Elliott Smith, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Kanda in the winter. I always listen to Tom Waits when I'm drunk.



These urges can kind of give me a heads up about what I'm feeling and thinking when I normally might ignore the fact that I'm feeling or thinking anything in particular.



Right now, for reasons unknown I am compulsively listening to Radiohead's "OK Computer" which I haven't listened to in a while.



I am a huge Radiohead fan. I'm one of those fans who feel that the band can do very little wrong. Such is the blindness of my love for certain things...I'm like that about Pink Floyd too...and ice cream.



The reason I'm writing this is because, while I listen to Radiohead all the time, and always like it, the last time I felt utterly compelled to listen to Radiohead nonstop was in 2000, just after "Kid A" came out. This was a really bad time in my life, and Radiohead just helped me to wallow in my misery.



When I feel down and out, hopeless and insignificant, alone and afraid, Radiohead is the perfect thing to listen to. It doesn't help, but it feels right.



I'm just hoping that this urge to listen now is not indicative of a greater problem. Maybe it's just a great album.