In a mood

A blogger posted a few weeks ago about not understanding people who deliberately listen to sad music when they're sad. Was it Pea? Erica? Cupie? I can't remember and I can't find it. The post has just been rattling around in my brain because I am a major fan of mood music. I concoct entire mixed tapes around one mood. ("Shouldn't the perfect mix cover the entire spectrum of human emotion?" she asked. "No," I said.) Thusly, when you flip through my CDs (the ones that make the cut into the car), you'll find: Sad Mix, Angry Mix, Mellow Mix, and Travel Mix. Oh, yeah, and Random Fun Mix. (And believe me, any mix that contains "Billie Jean" is indeed both random and fun.) (Have you noticed yet how repetition of "mix" is making you think more and more of a granola-type snack food?)

If you dig deep into the musical archives of my life, you'll find a mixed tape that has never been topped -- the Wallow Mix. This tape (created before fun CD-burning technology) is to be used only in times of extreme duress, at those times when you need to wallow in freakish misery forever. Or at least for the 90 minutes of music I've strung together that evoke some of the most wretched periods in my life. God, I love that tape. Sometimes you need music to counteract your moods, but most of the time, I prefer to just work through the mood. By over-feeding my melodrama, I kill it. It's all very existential. And this post was originally just going to be a listing of the songs on my Mellow Mix, which I just created last week and I've been obsessed with ever since. The words ran away from me. I apologize.