Month: July 2010

Pick a Shell, Any Shell

/ Deb / Leave a comment

The past two days, I’ve been digging the Smashing Pumpkins.  This really doesn’t make sense to me.  I like them just fine and have some of their old stuff, but it’s never been ‘go to’ music for me in any way.

Then yesterday while I was running, this lyric from “Tonight, Tonight” jumped up and hit me in the gut:

And you know you’re never sure
But you’re sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light.

I just love that.   It resonated with me, I think, because of an image that popped into my head recently while talking with a friend:  that each of us is basically a shell game.

We meet people throughout stages of our lives, we form relationships…people drift in and out and really only know a portion of us, or what we allow them to see. 

A constant shuffle, reminiscent of the law school “hide the ball” analogy…letting certain aspects of ourselves show, and cautiously guarding others.  Do we ever really lift up all the shells at once?

This seemed profound and deep at the time.  In print it seems more akin to late-night college drunk talk.  Twenty years too late, and I’m not drunk, but I still like it.

The Sweatiest Music

/ Deb / 1 Comment

I was thinking yesterday about what makes a good workout playlist.    What works on any given day is always up for grabs.  The lawyer in me, though, can distill it down into these essential elements:

1. VOLUME.  The music must be mind-numbingly loud, creating an audio cocoon that drowns out any peripheral noise.  I don’t want to be talked to when I have on headphones, so whether I can hear what anyone is saying is immaterial.

2. CONTENT.  Live recordings are best, but studio versions will do.  The perfect tempo is one that coincides with your running pace, resulting in a sweaty bliss as if you are dancing in the summer sun at The Gorge.   I have a recording of a really hot Pearl Jam show at The Gorge, and when those songs come on, it’s almost — almost — like being there again. And I’m usually just as sweaty, considering the temperature at that show was 110.

3.  TRANSPORT.  Creative visualization is a nice bonus.  If a song reminds me of a funny memory, it shifts my focus from thinking about how tired I am.  That being said, some songs have inexplicably made it onto my playlist, and I have no idea why.  Crosby, Stills and Nash only remind me of late nights in law school, and thus have no place on a workout playlist.  I can’t hit “skip” fast enough, yet I have been too lazy to remove them.

4.  CONTEXT.  And finally, of course, the music does not have to be music that you listen to at any other time.  Do I ever listen to Public Enemy or Soundgarden while I am making dinner?  No.  But are they a mainstay in my workout playlist?  Absolutely.