My Own Personal Score
Is what is playing on your mp3 a metaphor for your life?
That seems kind of silly, but I've wondered. Music has been a big part of my life for many years. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people in different ways. In my case, I've been using music as a kind of soundtrack for my life, I guess. I got my first Walkman ages ago and right off the bat starting making tapes of music that came to be closely intertwined with my life at the time. I walked the dog to that music, did homework to it, went to sleep to it, learned to drive to it, all kinds of things. In fact, there are Cd's I had to get rid of because the music was so powerfully linked to painful periods in my past that I couldn't bear to listen to it anymore. It transported me right back to the moment; it was as if I was reliving those particular episodes all over again.
There's no doubt about it-- music is powerful.
Though the days of Walkmans are long past, I am currently the proud owner of a shiny 4GB iPod Nano. (It was a gift a couple of years back from my way-too-generous father.) I've put so much stuff on the poor Nano that it is crammed full. And I listen to it every day, for one reason or another. So what does my music say about my life now? I thought a random sample might be kind of a fun way to see. I shuffled the 744 tracks in my music library on my iPod and here are the first ten that came up:
- "White Shadows" by Coldplay
- Section 12 of the Doctrine & Covenants
- "Shooting Star" from the Stardust movie score
- "Arrival to Earth" from the Transformers movie score
- "The Holy Ghost" from the Children's Songbook
- "Deep Love" by Mandalay
- Part 1-A of the Ideal Weight Paraliminal, by Paul R. Scheele
- "Professor Umbridge" from the Order of the Phoenix movie score
- "In Noctem" from the Half-Blood Prince movie score
- Alma chapter 3 from the Book of Mormon
It's kind of funny how much this actually reflects my life. Only two somewhat contemporary songs popped up: the one from Coldplay and the one from Mandalay. Yes, I do listen to the radio and so I'm not totally out of the loop when it comes to pop culture. Mostly out of the loop, but not 100% oblivious. But two chapters of the scriptures pop up, and I do try to put that first in my life. (It's part of the reason I have to get up so early.) There's a Primary song, and playing the piano in Primary is my life at church right now. The Ideal Weight Paraliminal is one of those funky things I got from my mother. You listen to it when you're going to sleep and it is supposed to help motivate you to lose weight. I don't know how much it contributed, but hey, I've lost a lot of weight, so that is a big part of my life too right now. Finally, a whopping 4 out the 10 songs are all from movies scores, which is the music I write my stories to. I wonder if I spend 40% of my waking hours working on my stories? No wonder my poor children feel like they can't get my attention at times!
What does your music say about your life?
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