My iPod Makes Me Silly

Okay, so I had a realization the other day while I was grocery shopping. I do most of the grocery shopping for our little married-couple-family-unit, and I tend to do it with my iPod on. It really makes the whole experience less tedious...I dread the sight of the grocery store much less knowing that I will have exceptional jams to keep me company.

It's hard to say how the situation I'm about to delineate evolved. I don't really know how to explain the realization I had, other than to denote that it took place as I found myself giving the finger to the oatmeal shelf in response to the sold-out nature of K.C.'s oatmeal of choice. I did this in front of other customers, pretty much without caring at all. And I literally felt like the music was making me do it, or at least bringing me to the point where I was uninhibited enough to really express myself in the moment.

Immediately after that I thought about the preceding 20-30 minutes I had been in the grocery store. Much lip-synching had occurred during that time, as well as some physical grooving-out, I'm pretty sure. All of this without a care in the world in front of the other grocery store patrons.

I didn't feel embarrassed, I didn't feel silly, even. I felt liberated and justified. I felt as if I had been heading to this point my entire life and had finally arrived. I felt as though all my years had been training for when I, at long last, allowed myself to express outwardly what music does to me internally. I remember when I first arrived at college and started taking classes from my teacher/mentor Kevin Zoernig. Kevin was awesome in so many ways, but one of the things that was immediately endearing and fascinating about him was how, when he was listening to something (either a record or a live performance), he unabashedly, PHYSICALLY grooved out to it. His head moved, bobbed, rocked back & forth, with his facial expression constantly changing. It was one of the coolest things I ever had the privilege of witnessing, and I think that maybe, just maybe, I have been trying to get to that point of inhibition and connection since. What is the music doing to you? What do you WANT the music to do to you? If you allowed yourself to project outwardly how the music is making you FEEL, what would that look like?

I don't think I flipped off the oatmeal shelf because the song I was listening to made me particularly angry. I also don't feel any shame whatsoever about flipping off an inanimate object in front of other people. I think I flipped off the oatmeal because I was truly annoyed at the lack of the oatmeal I needed to buy, and I was just uninhibited enough to allow that frustration to express itself outwardly.

I think this is why music is amazing...It puts us in touch with things that we don't access otherwise.