Music yay!

This is a posting of pure love for the fantabulous flambeau who sent me a big envelope all the way across the Atlantic with five count 'em five mix CDs, and a lovely letter containing songlists and explanation of choices. Handwritten! (My god, you know what, I can't even remember the last time I received a handwritten letter.) I have just begun dipping into the songs, and love everything I've heard so far, and am suffused with the sense of What wondrous life is this I lead, ripe apples drop about my head. And thank you so much Ms. flambeau! You're the top! You're Mahatma Gandhi! You're the top! You're Napoleon brandy! You're the purple light of a summer night in Spain, you're the National Gallery, you're Garbo's salary, you're cellophane!)

I have discovered as well that working out *with* music is a very different and considerably less tedious experience than without, and have already begun contemplating various gym playlists I'll need to assemble; slow dense trancy stuff for weightlifting, boppy rhythmic peppy stuff for the elliptical. I'm still trying to figure out what music I actually like, which sounds kind of odd and ridiculous, but -- well, listening to music is so *different* from, say, reading. Within a few sentences I can quickly and ruthlessly shove a piece of writing into a mental slot: This is excellent; this is well-executed but not to my taste; this is kind of crappy but entertaining; this *reeks*. With music, on the other hand, I'm much more in a beginner's-mind situation, which is exhilirating in a way, but also bewildering. What *do* I like? Still figuring it out ...