Last Saturday, I pensively walked into the Silver Platters store in downtown Seattle hoping to find the new album from Keane. The place, which has zillions of CD racks, looks like the creepy warehouse in Sopranos where James Gandolfini (Soprano) and Tony Sirico (Paulie) go to whack one of Johnny Sack’s guys.

In a bedazzled and trancelike moment, while listening to a groovy background song from Chris Rea, something surreal popped into my head. I thought, if music says things that words cannot, what are those things? They have to have something to do with our most intimate experiences and deepest feelings. Looking at the CD racks, I overdramatically thought how many hearts have been broken for these many track? Who betrayed who? Who lost a dear one? Who’s had a thorny upbringing? Who’s been mad, sad, or frustrated? Who’s in love? Who fell out of love? Who’s about to fall in love? Who’s in pain as a result of others’ pain?

Like every other aspects of our lives these things are hard to define. Love, hate, betrayal, deception, birth, infidelity, and loss of a dear one will introduce experiences of such effects – where one can only express his/her stance and posture thru the harmony of inner voices from a sea of possibilities. Music has a long pedigree of transforming individuals, I don’t relate to people who take it absentmindedly!

Even Paulie liked good music.