Choosing a Soundtrack, and a Life Track

If you haven't checked out pandora.com, I really encourage you to do so. This is not a paid endorsement; it's just a service I'm really jazzed about. Pandora provides commercial-free music directly to your computer. They make their money from music sales, downloads and the ads on their site--the service is completely free for listeners. You can choose music by song title or artist, and there are 1000's available, in a wide variety of genres:

rock country blues classical country jazz hip hop r&b new age christian reggae latin folk pop oldies electronic

You can create your own mix, even several channels to suit your moods. The service plays music continuously, and you can vote on the selections to refine its understanding of your musical taste--you're creating the programming. There are links to get more information about the album or the artist, and options to purchase, download, or simply switch to another selection.

I have the music playing on my computer for background all the time, and besides being enjoyable and relaxing it improves my concentration and focus as I write or play poker. It's like having a virtually unlimited musical library, and the information the service provides about the musical qualities of the selections, as well as the related artists it offers you as it continues, can really deepen your knowledge and appreciation of the music. I selected a few songs from B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn, for example, and Pandora played me hours of artists from the great blues traditions I'd never heard before or knew little about. Just now I selected "Mozart" and Pandora has played me The Piano Sonata in F Major, followed by music by Clementi, Hadyn, and Vivaldi, all beautiful, soothing, soulful, all acclaimed works by major composers.

The internet is an amazing thing. It can be a cesspool, of course, the lowest common denominator of human experience. Or it can offer you fingertip access to some of the most powerful, healing, enlightening ideas and experiences in the history of civilization. The choice is yours. Science, history, news, art, music, or celebrity gossip and unspeakable filth. It's all there, in the privacy of your home. I found pandora on Google: I searched "music online" or "blues radio"--I'm not sure which now.

One of my as yet unformulated goals, now that I'm in transition, is to start learning again. I truly believe that when we stop learning we start dying, and education has always been something I've found very rewarding for its own sake. I'll never be one of those smart guys who gets a degree in engineering or accounting and makes a pile of money, but I've always felt the most energized and alive when I was learning something new. I'd like to get a Master's Degree from the University of Oregon so I would be a true Duck. (I went to Warner Pacific; we didn't have a football team so I had to adopt one.) Reading and learning and taking classes really stimulates a writer. John Steinbeck never graduated but he attended classes at Stanford and they were a tremendous inspiration to him.

I just googled "online Masters programs, University of Oregon" and I found out the Journalism school offers a Masters degree in literary nonfiction. I'll have to find out more about it.

Somehow, the last third of my life has to be about more than bad golf and small stakes poker and letting people yell at me about their trash. It's exciting to consider the possibities, particularly with Mendelssohn and Mozart providing the soundtrack, followed by a little Howlin' Wolf. I think I read a quote once that said, "Without music, life would be a mistake." I thoroughly agree. Create a soundtrack for your life, and as Thoreau said, step to the music you hear, however measured or far away.