Every once in a while someone who I think is reasonably intelligent will suggest to me that the I-pod’s shuffle feature is not random. They will insist that it knows.what you want to hear. I always snap back with two points. One, in strings of random numbers there can often be what appear to be patterns, but if you continue long enough there will be something that breaks the pattern. Second and I think more importantly, in a way listening to music is like reading your horoscope, you filter music through your current situation. Imagine you sleep late. You are half an hour late to work sitting on a crowded subway or in heavy traffic. One song that might come on is John Lennon’s Imagine and your reaction might be that it calms you down. Another song that may come on is Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name. In listening to this you may take the stress and combine it with the anger and high energy of the song..Either way you get off the subway or out of your car and you think to yourself that was the perfect song for my situation this morning. Now just for illustrative purposes imagine those same two songs played as background for a film depicting Marines fighting insurgents in Baghdad. Hearing the first you might question the reason for war, Hearing the second you might feel the intensity of war. This concept is one of the reasons why I think about music so much, because every time I listen to a song, especially ones I like it is through a new filter.

That being said on the way in this morning the first song I heard was Good Vibrations by the Beach boys. This made me realize even more that I should not be in an office today.