The Tune in My Head

I'm amazed by how evocative music is for me personally. A couple of weekends back, a friend riding shotgun with me was rummaging through the pile of CDs in my car. He put in this CD compilation I'd burnt maybe a year and a half back. The title was "Assorted Mix".

Fat lot of help that title is. This was before I started labeling my CDs more seriously. I now have titles like "September '05" or "San Diego - Las Vegas road trip". That is much more helpful.

This compilation "Assorted Mix" is very random. It crosses genres (Eminem to Blondie to Linkin Park) and time-zones ( though the music's mostly from the '90s).

However, even as I was driving down WA-520 and I-5, there were times I'd see myself at different places in different states of mind. There I was, in my room in C-block, worrying over my word-lists on a lazy sunday afternoon, and probably wasting too much time chatting with Alhad. Then I was in grad school, sitting in a lab by myself, wrapping my head around some esoteric networking concept, thinking if Eminem meant me when he said "Success is my only motherf*$%ing option, failure's not". Linkin Park's "In the End" was another favorite in those maddening and frustrating times.

I've mellowed down since the times when only rock music was an outlet. I've been listening to a wide variety of music over the past year now - electronica, world music. I've taken a stab at trying listening to *gasp* Indian classical music (the gasp is because it's me doing this attempt).

Time to burn a few more mix CDs.