that's Grateful Dead, not the common expletive often associated with GD.
okay, so last week i pontificated about the benefits of communing with nature as i had a helpful and healing walk in the woods.
THIS week, i marched into the cold wilderness with a different perspective . . .
this past week i experienced a technological miracle and my iPod was liberated from a year in some kind of mp3 purgatory and i was able to not only clear it off to make room for some new music, i was indeed able to upload some of my favorite new music. sounds simple, but in this regard (and perhaps a few others), it has been a frustrating year.
music is kind of like nature for me - it often can completely shift my state of being and have a deep emotional impact on me, almost always in a good way.
maybe it was the sun shining this morning or the fact that it was 7 degrees warmer, but i decided to bring along my personal soundtrack and grabbed my iPod. i wanted a different kind of spiritual experience. i occassionally like rockin down the wooded trail.
i love to set the music to 'shuffle' and see what that randomness brings. i always struggle when a tune arrives that i really don't feel like listening to. i feel obligated to hear it through as if it will feel neglected or rejected if i press forward and leap over it. also, i live in fear that i will give the little electronic brain that lives in the shuffle component the wrong idea. it seems to pay attention to what i like or don't like. i can hear the patterns. i mean, what if i like that music next week and the iPod misinterprets my mood and i never hear the song again? (how about that for drama!)
this morning's shuffle didn't require any inner debate (perhaps becacuse i removed the annoying tunes and uploaded different ones?). i was quite happy to groove along with some early grateful dead at the start of our journey. when johnny winters cued up, i wasn't sure this was somehow appropriate, but i almost danced down the trail and the dog, while perhaps not listening, reponded to my childish glee and seemed to dance along with me. love how the shuffle switches gears on me and i heard a soulful joan baez and a meditative, new agey andreas vollenveider before the little brain in the iPod knew exactly what to do and lit upon one of my all-time favorite grateful dead trips, terrapin station.
by the time it came on, i was on the last bit of my dance with nature, so i slowed down and listened to perhaps one of the most finely produced grateful dead epic ballads brought on by jerry garcia and robert hunter (and probably some LSD). i defy anyone to follow the storyline in the lyrics in one sitting. it is almost impossible to not get utterly lost in the musical side trails. not their traiditonal spacejam, but one that is so carefully produced that it has a mood-altering affect.
so, here i find an added benefit to my natural medicine: meg + nature + good music = excellent mood enhancer, sans drugs or chemicals!
i'm enjoying my sunday so far, how about you?
;)
meg
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