Friday, April 15, 2011

hormones and sound

I was working on some projects at the art center when a song came on the radio that reminded me of someone because he once said it reminded him of me. I understand that being sappy is part of human nature for some of us, but I remember being kind of pissed as you can only be when you're 18 and skeptical about most things especially ooshy-gooshy things and it's a terrible vanilla song about some chick that the guy loves who goes off and has adventures and drinks soy lattes and he's still pining for her but she's kind of off doing her own thing. Or something. I don't know.

There were a lot of reasons why things didn't work out with us and this was the least of them, but it was kind of what happened, except that I drink my tea and coffee black and don't do tae-bo while listening to Mozart. For a pair of goofy young kids who both had subcultural leanings and closets full of black clothing, he should've known that something else would have tugged at my heartstrings way more than Train.

Yet I don't take the Tastebuds.fm philosophy that finding one's soulmate is possible through common love of the same bands. It must be some weird hipster thing maybe or a way to break the ice, where taste is cultural currency and conspicuous consumption is paramount. But heck, what do I know anyway? I know that there were way too many relationships in my life where me and whoever connected with the same sounds but never connected with each other.

Those times we drove around all night listening to our favorite songs and talking til 3 in the morning about everything and nothing, listening to soul music in your old Crown Vic by the lake when I was so stressed out and sore from a car crash and you wanted me to feel better, that time we huddled under a track jacket watching Sonic Youth in the rain getting goosebumps from the gorgeous noise of Thurston Moore's guitar and being really wet and cold? A shared love of tuneage and an enjoyment of each other's company was all it was and nothing more and at least I see it for what it is instead of trying to read anything into it further. Life isn't Garden State, people.

I'm also not sure if I trust a site that suggests due to some terrible survey that Nirvana and Metallica fans are more likely to copulate on the first date than people who like Coldplay, in part because the sampling of genre was so limited. And by the way, oh White and Mostly British People, the Blur/Oasis rivalry is so 1990-what?

3 comments:

Randal Graves said...

Didn't the tae-bo dude get arrested? Aside from the idea of the soulmate inducing chortle (on a planet of 7 billion, one will connect with at least 3.8 people), I had a point, I swear, but off it went into the ether.

Train? Yikes. Everyone knows chicks dig being serenaded with Ride the Lightning.

Word verification: hypoo. Since hype is poo, kind of redundant, says Billy Blanks.

that girl said...

I was serenaded by "Ride the Lightning" with a little bit of Van Halen thrown in for good measure once when a kid named Steve who'd gotten my number from a ditzy coworker of mine and played his Les Paul over the phone for me.

Neither of us was interested in dating and spent most of the time talking about general Guitar World nerdery which is about one step above D&Dism on the geek quotient.

Anyways, maybe you have a point here.

Randal Graves said...

Since I can neither play nor sing, I've never had to subject any of the fairer sex to nightmarish misery.

But, I must quibble. Guitar World nerdery above D&Dism? As both a nerd and a geek, methinks not, comrade. How many Les Pauls are fitted with +2 Strings of Sustain?