At the moment, I am mostly listening to Pharrell Williams' Happy (so much so I watched two versions of the video this morning, the original and one with dogs and a cat. It's a close contest as to what I prefer; I think the cat just edges it to the second option). It's strange, as despite it being quite a subdued song in a way, it is happy, super happy. The other one is "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes, because of the line "let me go out", because I want to go out (I'm housebound with a broken leg, and my most recently heard refrain, beyond "I think it's less swollen and more of a normal colour" is "can I go out now?"). These are going on a playlist, specially designated to the last month or so. I like to do that - create a playlist to capture a particular time in my life, or month. Music is such a trigger for memory; the album "Blue" by Joni Mitchell is my first trip back to South Africa after leaving, and despite being quite a sad album, for me it's happy. Or Mika's first album is the first holiday I took after I started working (I hadn't any time off for over a year), and it takes me back to standing in the living room ironing my clothes, the night before flying off, and arriving and sitting on my friend's boat sipping a beer. It can work against you though; I bought a new album and unfortunately listened to it a lot while reading Margaret Atwood's "The Blind Assassin" (which isn't a terrible book, but it isn't my favourite) so for me the album is now eternally linked to it (though I'm putting in the effort to change this, listening it constantly while doing other things). The Shins "Celibate Life" is taking the bus to my law exams (and seeing a priest while I was listening to it, which I thought was good timing).
I'm also listening to Girls of Hawaii (which is a Belgian band, I never would have thought that, given the name and that they largely sing in English) which I now have after the bi-annual music exchange between me and Mr LaGoz. Poor man - he now gets all the random songs I've bought off iTunes on a whim in the past six months; he has such serious, good taste, in all things (including wives), whereas I'll download any old rubbish (a friend once described listening to one of my mix CDs as like "being inside the mind of a mad man") but he has been introduced to OMD's "If you leave" and "War" by Edwin Starr (this means he now gets the joke on Seinfeld about the original title of War and Peace being "War, what is it good for" - this just shows how awesome Seinfeld is, that it's still hilarious after 20 years and multiple watchings, AND if you don't get all the cultural references). It's like that episode is renewed for him.
