Music for the mood

My ipod froze today, but it might have been a low battery. I usually plug it in when I get up in the morning but today I only gave it a small charge. It has been charged and appears to be fine now.

I still have a credit balance on Itunes, so I downloaded a few Billie Holiday songs. One was "Strange Fruit" (1956 version) about lynchings in the South which were quite common from the 1860s until, believe it or not, the 1960s.

Entire families of white folks would turn out for these 'events'. School kids were let out to watch. Couples held hands, pictures were taken and postcards were created with a lock of the victims hair as a souvenir. Sometimes these victims actually committed crimes, many of which did not warrant the death penalty, but oftentimes, their 'crimes' were kissing a white woman or holding hands with one.

The other songs I downloaded with "God Bless This Child' and "Gloomy Sunday" a song about suicide. I'm not suicidal, but have been gloomy of late and these songs seem apropos.

I have a wide variety of songs on my Ipod, which includes Rock, Classic Rock, INXS, Big Bands, Jazz, Disco, Beatles, 60's, 80s, 90s, Eminem as well as a smattering of Podcasts. I'm glad I got 40GB version.

But when the Ipod died on my walk, I was forced to deal with the 'silence' of the mundane, Starbucks music, birds, cars and other people's conversations. When I'm listening to the Ipod, I block out the world. Some people claim that our society has become so individualistic, we've become a nation of islands marching to the beat of our own drummers. Yup. Now bug off.