you forgot it in people.

(Joshua Masayoshi Huff)

I know I'm supposed to be doing the Radiohead countdown, but I felt compelled to do something else musically. Don't worry, this involves songs as well. I'll pick up theradiohead countdown tomorrow.

I like to listen to music pretty much wherever I go. Some people say that this prevents people from actively taking part in what is going on around them, but I think it changes experiences entirely, and makes things really surreal (try "Macquarie Ridge" by Boards of Canada or "Guilty Cubicles" by Broken Social Scene for this effect). Here are the songs that I followed around town on Tuesday night--and the thoughts that accompanied them. These are my exact thoughts, and not my critiques of the songs.

Jose Gonzalez "Heartbeats"
Ahhhhhhhh. This song just comes on, and it seems like the perfect song to listen to while you're in a supermarket, like I am as I listen to it. It seems perfectly cinematically mundane, and in the movie, the protagonist probably sees a montage of important scenes in his life.

And that same thing happened to me. This song has always reminded me of falling in love with Sarah. I argued with Patrick over which version of this song is better, and though the original version by the Knife has grown on me, I still believe that this version is superior because it's not about they keyboard flair but about the raw emotion of the lyrics, which get lost in the Knife's version.

Like I've said, this song will always remind me of Sarah and falling in love with her. There were so many days that I'd be walking to class last year and would listen to this song and tear up and just be happy, even though, you know, the song is actually pretty downbeat. It has that sort of reflective tone.

"we had a promise babe...we were in love"

I guess love is always happy, even when it's incredibly sad, because it's such a pure emotion. You still feel Jose Gonzalez' narrator being in love with the woman who he is no longer actually with, and that's what love is. It doesn't just go away.

And the differences between the Knife's version (also included in MP3 form here) and Jose's version illustrate the dichotomies of love--the Knife's loud version shows that love is often upset and overstated and overpowering...and that the actual love between people get lost during these periods, even though the feelings are all there....they're just buried.

In Jose's version, we only have the honesty...it's all right there, staring us in the face, because there aren't any distractions. Both are variations of the same thing, and I think we all forget that.

Like I've said, the Jose Gonzalez version reminds me of falling in love with Sarah and it always will. I don't know if it's because it's a song that played a lot during the early stages or...well, there could be a million reasons. But it's like every other album and song for me--I associate a lot of them with colors (primarily different shades of red and blue). This is one of the few that is actually associated with a specific person and always will be.

Guillemots "Trains to Brazil"
Every band has a singer like Thom Yorke these days, don't they? This band, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Muse...the list goes on forever.

This song is about the Brazilian man killed in London a few years back, after the train bombings, because he was another suspect in the bombings. They mistook the Brazilian man for one of the actual suspects and, when he didn't respond to the police yelling at him, they shot him.

This song reminds me of freshman year at GW, when I'd be up until the wee hours of Friday, finishing up work for my IR discussions on Friday and playing Civ, as nerdy as it sounds.

Highlights from today's Champions League games are showing on a flat screen television in the discount supermarket, and I wonder why a discount supermarket needs a flat screen or a digital cable. I mean, it's baffling, really...the television is locate in a little niche that can barely be seen by anyone. I'm thankful it's there, though, so that I can catch up with all of today's games.

Oh, it's the trumpet bit. This really reminds me of the movie Billy Elliot, which, in turn, reminds me of Pat Burgwinkle. Whenever there's an absolutely absurd part of a song, I think of Pat's goofy face mimicking the song and laugh (his face is not always goofy, of course--just when he's mimicking certain parts of songs).

Broken Social Scene "Pacific Theme"
Walking to my bike, I see that there's something in my bike basket. I hate how they always put these flyers for bad Thai restaurants in my basket--I really do feel that it's both a waste of paper and very assuming of the companies. I know, business is business, but it's such a waste.
Upon closer inspection, it's a leaf in the basket. This is oddly reassuring. I don't ever mind when a leaf, one of the few reminders of nature in our cities, finds it's way into my basket.