The night before I moved my stuff to Universe City, I put my p@ndora station on Patty Griffin, and I haven't moved it since. In the car, I listen to country, these days. I don't feel up for anything more. The Top 40 stations feel so harsh. I flip to them occasionally and then shudder and flip away, because I can't handle yet another song about, I don't even know, girls in bikini tops and Daisy Dukes or whatever else Top 40 songs are about these days.
I find the country music world reassuring right now, even though I am bothered by the all-whiteness of it, because it is full of people who do what they say they will do, people who fall in love and stay that way, even when their hearts are broken. Or maybe that isn't even it. Maybe it is that it idealizes doing what you say you will do and falling in love and staying that way.
Is it weird to say that it seems like the Top 40 songs skew younger? So many of the songs seem to forever be stuck at the college-age post-modern ideal of nightclubs and drinking and looking hot and getting laid, and it just makes me tired. I deal with the craziness every day at work, and I just moved, and I feel this craving for stability and affection, for friendship and truth.
And so I keep listening to music that I don't like so much musically for the sake of the feeling it evokes, the same feeling that I get sitting down to dinner at my parents' house, with the kiddos underfoot, the same feeling that I get looking around at a group of good friends who I have known for a while, the same feeling that I get swapping pieces of the newspaper at the kitchen island at the K.'s house: the feeling of having a place to belong.
I find the country music world reassuring right now, even though I am bothered by the all-whiteness of it, because it is full of people who do what they say they will do, people who fall in love and stay that way, even when their hearts are broken. Or maybe that isn't even it. Maybe it is that it idealizes doing what you say you will do and falling in love and staying that way.
Is it weird to say that it seems like the Top 40 songs skew younger? So many of the songs seem to forever be stuck at the college-age post-modern ideal of nightclubs and drinking and looking hot and getting laid, and it just makes me tired. I deal with the craziness every day at work, and I just moved, and I feel this craving for stability and affection, for friendship and truth.
And so I keep listening to music that I don't like so much musically for the sake of the feeling it evokes, the same feeling that I get sitting down to dinner at my parents' house, with the kiddos underfoot, the same feeling that I get looking around at a group of good friends who I have known for a while, the same feeling that I get swapping pieces of the newspaper at the kitchen island at the K.'s house: the feeling of having a place to belong.
1 comment:
you got me hooked on the patty griffin channel. two others that i enjoy... the joshua radin channel and the tracy chapman channel. i guarantee them. :) xo
btw, i hated that katy perry daisy dukes song until it was one of the dances for zumba. :)
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