The rambler

I was about to write a post called "Seven albums I couldn't do without" or something like that, and I decided to postpone it because instead of seven, I came up with 35.

You might say I have somewhat of a problem — an addiction, nearly. I own at least 1,000 CDs. My iTunes library says I have 14,651 items. I could press "play" at the top of my music collection and I wouldn't run out of listening material until the 40th straight day. That doesn't account for the LP collection (300ish?) in my closet.

You'd think that with that much music, I'd have "enough." And by "you," I mean my mother. When I lived at home and had to keep buying increasingly larger CD shelves, Mom used to tell me that in college, she had one little crate with a few records, and that was enough. She eventually gave up on telling me the story.

I couldn't possibly listen to everything in my collection with any regularity, right? So why buy new stuff? Well, it's because I'm hungry. Sounds corny, but it's the only comparison I can use. You know those fit guys you knew in school who never seemed to get full? (In some cases, these "guys" were tiny girls, which was even more perplexing.) These guys would eat a burger as an appetizer before chowing down a steak, and still have room for a baked potato and ice cream.

That's how I feel about music: I can never get enough. I've been trying to figure out why, and here's what I came up with: I'm a thrill-seeker. Not in the traditional sense of jumping out of airplanes or other stupidly dangerous shit, but in the sense of the thrill and excitement of a new experience. When I hear a record for the first time, it will evoke something different in me than anything else I've heard. It might remind me of another record or song or artist, but in a slightly different way. I'd rather have that feeling a thousand times than hear the same crate of records over and over again.

I then realized that this is how I live my life in almost every area. I have my favorite beers, sure, but I'm more likely to order something I've never tried, just to see if my taste buds are delighted in a different way. When Heather and I make travel plans, we seek out someplace we've never been, so we can see buildings our eyes never imagined (or have only seen in two dimensions), smell air that might be a little unfamiliar and meet people who have been raised in a different environment. And Netflix is a cinematic Godsend for a thrill-seeker.

Why am I telling you this? I'm not. I'm telling myself. Because any time I'm tempted to stick with what I know just because it's easier, I could use a reminder that what makes me happy isn't necessarily the comfort of familiarity — it's the thrill of discovery.