12:00am 11/15/08 my roommate is playing Girltalk from her computer while clicking through Facebook. She complains that she is getting sick, I tell her to go to bed, so she does and we turn a fan on to block outside noise.
Morning:
Musically uneventful. I take a break from doing homework before my 3:00pm class, and decide to clean room. I put on "Hey" by the Pixies from my computer's iTunes, because I have had this song stuck in my head for the past two weeks.
iTunes is set on shuffle, and the next song that comes on is "Stool Pigeon Blues" by Lightnin' Hopkins.
I turn music off to do more course reading, and hear a succession of techno songs blasting from the boys next door, who are playing Halo.
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I return from my class at 5:30, and turn on iTunes on shuffle while I scarf down dinner before a 6:30 meeting. The first song that comes on is "Dirty Diana" by Michael Jackson. I am not in the mood for something so upbeat, so I skip it. The next song that comes on is "Take You There" by G Love and Special Sauce, and then "Little Miss Lover" by Jimi Hendrix. Then a rough recording by my old a capella group at UVM--"Virtual Insanity" by Jamiraqui--comes on, and I quickly skip it; definitly not in the mood for off-key trips down memory lane, and definitly didn't realize I hadn't deleted that yet. "Dig For Fire" by the Pixies comes on, and then "Something" by the Beatles which I skip because I never really liked that song. Then comes "Aqualung" by a band called Morcheeba, which is one of those bands that has one song you really really like, so you download the whole album thinking they'll all be great, but none of the other songs are anywhere near as good as that first one. So I skip it. Then comes "One Life One Love" by Hyrogliphics, and finally, "Big Man with a Gun" by Nine Inch Nails, which I turn off halfway through because it is a little too intense for my current mood. I resume studying before my meeting, and hear someone playing a piece on the violin somewhere down the hall. I don't recognize it--I'm not very knowledgable about classical pieces. Then I hear someone whistling scales and little tunes somewhere down the hall, and he/she is surprisingly on tune and loud.
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After my meeting, I come home to do work (this is about 9:30). Most people on my floor are not playing music and neither am I--I assume we all have work to do. I do hear a young woman singing in the bathroom, though, which has become a common occurance for her. She is singing what sounds like a pop song or maybe a tune from a musical. You know what? She is in there right now, maybe I will go ask her what she is singing. Be right back.....
When I first ask her if and what she was singing, she denies that she was even singing at all, but eventually she explains that maaaybe she was humming, and finally, when I explain why I am questioning, she flat out tells me it is "You Could Be Happy" by Snow Patrol.
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At around 10:00pm, I hear someone playing some recorded music made up of accoustic guitar, male vocals, and beats. It isn't close enough for me to distinguish what it is, and I can't tell where it's coming from. This music lasts for about 20 minutes.
By a little after 11:00pm, my roommate complains of feeling sick again, so I again turn the fan on and she sleeps while I do homework. No more music tonight.
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2 comments:
It's interesting to note how technological advance (iTunes, iPods...) has created so many various options in what we choose to listen to, both long term (e.g. buying a track online) and moment-by-moment (e.g. your decision not to play a song because it's to upbeat).
And still, many of the decisions we make concerning our "music-scape" aren't really our conscious decisions. I think the decision-making becomes less conscious/deliberate partly due to the ease with which we can access music - e.g. we can play music just to block out noise (through more noise). Maybe what happens as a result is that we often forget to put music in the forefront of our minds (and always in the background).
Nice work Julie. I really liked how you took time to tell us about yourself and your mood throughout as you listened to music.
Hope your roomate is feeling better (for your sake, so it sounds, as well as hers!).
Ben
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