Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Stream of consciousness

I've decided I'm going to try something new, which is to set my IPod on random and then let whatever song it picks cause me to write something in response for the period that the song is going on (if it goes longer, so be it).

The Ipod has decided this is going to be a challenge, because it picked Portishead - Silence. I don't know the song well, I believe I got it from a CD a friend of mine sent me along with The Go! Team and something else (possibly Camera Obscura).  Portishead strikes me as a band I'd really like to like, but like the Chemical Brothers before it, it's not something I can generally get into, although I should make considerably greater use of techno-ish music on runs.  The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" and Propellerheads' "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" were both on my marathon playlist if I recall correctly (I'm certain about the latter, which is the perfect marathon song since it's 9 minutes long). Portishead isn't prefect for such things, the harrowing sort of vocal line on this song isn't the kind of adrenaline and endorphin dump that I'm looking for, but the drum loops could carry the day by themselves.

Of course, IPod. Now you play "The Book I Write" by Spoon. Well, I managed to time the last one so I wrote for the exact duration of the song previous.  For this song, it's a much easier task.  Stranger Than Fiction (the soundtrack from which the song is taken) is one of my favorite movies, easily in the top 10 of the last decade for me and probably higher if I were to concoct such a list.  Considering the paucity of movies I've seen since I went to law school, this is hardly putting it in a pantheon, though I think it belongs there.  I suspect Stranger Than Fiction might have been the first movie I saw by myself in Delaware after moving here.  Immediately after seeing it, I went out and bought the soundtrack and have since bought a half dozen Spoon albums. Good choice, Ipod.

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