Hey, what do you know, I'm literate.

There is something about living in a large house with just two other individuals that fosters a good environment for reading. I've lived in the house for just over two weeks now, and I am already incredibly accustomed to the absolute silence at night. Coming from an ever-noisy student apartment complex in a college town to a suburban residential neighborhood, I wasn't prepared for just how quite it would get at night. None of us living here are students or have occupations that require anything of us at night, so after about 9 p.m. we begin winding down. We may watch some television (praise DVR!) or play some video games or something like that, but eventually the TV gets turned off and people start heading to their rooms for the night. For me, this provides a perfect opportunity to read, something I haven't done much of in the past two years since graduation. Living with five other guys in a small student apartment didn't really foster the right environment for reading. But all that has changed.

I've recently finished two books about music. Not serious music criticism or anything, really just a series of essays/chapters about specific songs and either how those songs tie into the authors' lives or some ruminations on life generated by the songs. The first book, Love is a Mixtape by Rob Sheffield, takes a look at specific mixtapes Sheffield made throughout his life and how they became a part of his life and relationship to his deceased wife. The second book, Songbook by Nick Hornby, isn't built upon such a tragic loss, but it is full of genuine emotion and wit, something Hornby has always successfully incorporated into his writing. I read Songbook once back in 2005, very shortly after I returned from my mission. Hornby had written a line that has stuck in my mind, a credo, as it were, for how I've tried to approach music. It's found in a chapter in which Hornby explains how he's begun listening to music that, at earlier stages in his life, he would never have loved or been able to truly appreciate. He's come to understand how foolish it is to worry about anything other than the actual music. Too often we worry about an artist's genre or being too cool for certain kinds of music, and Hornby realizes just how limiting such thought is. He concludes with this awesome statement: "You're either for music or you're against it, and being for it means embracing anyone who's any good." Amen.

I'm not going to go any deeper into my ideas about musical appreciation or anything. I just wanted to share this awesome quote with the hope that it will ring true for fellow music lovers (and I know there are some of you out there reading this). That's all.