"Do you ever wish you could quote music? I always wonder what to write in the little boxes that say “about me” and “description” etc. on the various online portals of communication that, as a teenager*, I inevitably manage. I usually end up typing a few words, deleting them, and staring at that little flickering vertical line that seems to mock my futile attempts to accurately portray myself in a few (preferably very witty and clever) sentences. Needless to say, I most often end up with a dry, uninspiring, incredibly generic little paragraph that outlines some arbitrary details about myself that happen to pop into my mind at the time. I feel that the only way I could ever accurately represent myself would be through music. I wish there were a way to “write” a piece of a song into that little box. I do not mean typing a lyric that I like, or putting a song on some player to share my music tastes with others, but isolating a single, unique collection of sounds from a piece of music and somehow manipulating the letters on my keyboard to make the reader hear it. As bizarre and absurd as it may seem, it’s a notion that I cannot seem to forget. Maybe the particular music is a short clip from a piece I’ve always known and liked, maybe it’s just a riff from an anonymous song I heard on the radio or in a friend’s car, but either way some things I hear just stick with me, and no matter how many times I listen to that old standby, no matter if I never hear that mystery song again, that individual progression of notes and chords seems to explain me perfectly. I’m not sure why I am so convinced that twenty seconds of noise can flawlessly and precisely encompass every aspect of myself-every joy and disappointment, every memory and aspiration, every opinion, secret, success, pride, and mistake-but I remain convinced. To say that every person who would listen to those twenty seconds would know me would be to exaggerate the extent of my belief; I merely feel that in some way that particular sequence of tones describes me, captures a part of myself that I do not know how to put into words: a part of myself that, maybe, I don’t really understand. Perhaps I am the only person who identifies with a floating melody or haunting progression which seems to hold in it the very soul of it’s listener-but I suspect not. I suspect that there are many of us for whom a little tune seems to own our fears, flaws, future, first kiss. I wish desperately to replace these words with music, in the hope that anyone who should stumble across my thoughts would first have the chance to get to know me a little bit, if only for twenty seconds or so."

My first entry from my (oft neglected) blog, written before I discovered 8tracks. Maybe now you folks will get to know me a little bit, if only for 8 tracks or so.

*Again, this was written some time ago, but I didn't want to edit it for something as inessential to the message as my age...

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