Do The Evolution

We may regard a song as an insignificant source of influence, but there’s no doubt in my mind that our character will lead us to like those songs closer to our self-image. We should all know by now that self-image is always evolving, that we either grow out of the ridiculous limiting notions and move on to more provocative mental images of ourselves or else perish alive, turning into walking corpses. However, we may keep around the same friends, engage in similar familiar situations and play things relatively safe. Not that we won’t succumb to sin from time to time but our lives become rather monotonous and dull instead. This won’t take another analysis in depth, as to why the existential journey has led us to where we are. That should take another chapter.
Instead, I like to believe that empowerment begins with tastes. We’re supposed to grow out of our boring jeans, the same shaving cream and cologne, burn fat, eradicate limitations of any sort, crush dependency, and help others fend for themselves. In the process, our tastes must be refined constantly. What are we if not creatures of vanity? Life is vanity, and life demands a contagiously positive energy and people a lot less attention than commonly paid. Even the music I listen to nowadays, it is more colorful and alive, more optimistic too. I need to be surrounded by currents of high energy whether it is through meeting strangers (what can be more challenging?), strengthening our sacred bonds (relationships, commitments, goals), have our cake and eat it. Oh but of course it is only possible to have it both ways. Couples do not need to part ways; what they’re in need of is reinventing themselves over and find alternate solutions to their conflicts. If that isn’t feasible due to irreconcilable differences, then happily decide to wish the best for each other and go your own ways. Whatever you decide, do it and start living as of right now!
In my old collection, very little music was truly "happy", instead I had analytical, cold, dark themes, rock and not much you could dance to. Self-loathing, arena rock themes, Guns and Roses, Metallica, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Aerosmith, Nine Inch Nails, and on the happier side U2, Radiohead, Bon Jovi. In the Spanish front, Andrés Calamaro (since the time he was part of Los Rodríguez), Los Prisioneros, Café Tacvba, Rubén Blades, and so much romantic music that will just make me sick with boredom now. Out of it all, I must have deleted most of the songs and leave most significant ones of each. Still though I had more than seven hundred original albums in compact disc and even if two or three songs were picked out of every one of them, that would be the equivalent of more than sixteen hundred songs. That was roughly my calculations when I discovered that the two or three song rule did not always apply. For instance, how could I diminish anything from Pink Floyd’s The Wall? In the end, a good couple of thousand songs made it to the ipod. That left me with space enough for another five thousand songs more. I will make it my job to have that amount be full of positive and heartfelt music to rival the depressing legacy of my teens and early twenties. By the end of my twenties, my taste had become more worldly, still predominantly obscure. (And I agree, not just in music but also literature, the darker the better. Still, though, it is easy to be seduced by the voices of doom. What compels us isn’t. What we idealize, we must make an effort if we are to achieve it. Otherwise, glory will be just as common as toothpaste.
Up to now, a great army of more carnal and chauvinistic, funky, down-right fun or silly songs, two good thousand of them, are in place. Anything that makes me want to move or meditate or inspire to set fire to tired mental infrastructures, bring the walls of subconscious down. Charles Wright’s Express Yourself is playing. I calculate that one in every three songs is gloomy and rarely gets to be played. I just get up and change it. Unless, of course, I want to briefly reminisce instances long gone. (Hardly likely.)