Who am I? Don’t ask my iPod

When I put my iPod on Shuffle I get a very confused sense of myself. I may be very old and I may be very young. I may be bipolar but then maybe I’m not. I may have multiple personalities – that’s always a possibility. I may even be a world citizen given some of the “world music” that shows up sometimes.

The iPod starts playing and I hear:

- Bobby Darin
- New Pornographers
- Son House
- Lucinda Williams
- Peggy Lee
- Duke Ellington
- Shaggy
- k-os
- Dean Martin (A Marshmellow World of all things!)
- Goo Goo Dolls
- Conjure One
- Emmylou Harris
- Creedence Clearwater Revival
- Ricki Lee Jones
- Angelique Kidjo
- Avril Lavigne
- Tom Waits
- Shania Twain

And it just goes on. All over the damn map. I remember when I restricted myself to basically bang-your-head–against-the-wall rock bands or those depressing British bands like the Smiths who only sang about the great vale of tears we’re all passing through and how awful it is to be alive.

Now I like a good toe-tapping pop song as much as anything else. And I really like those old cocktail crooners like Dino and Frank. (Sometimes I think I‘ve turned into my mother – she loved those guys, which may be why I like that music now.) So while what you listen to is often a good idication of who you are, often it's not. Life's like that. What is true is not true - all at the same time.

Oh my … and there goes Van Morrison with Wild Night …