More Pandora Musings, plus apparently Sad Songs Say So Much

Boy, do I like Pandora radio (http://www.pandora.com/), and they're not even paying me -- not that I'd refuse, of course. You just type in a song, and they make a station based entirely around it. I've already got stations for "She Moves Through the Fair," "The Great Valerio," "Decoration Day", "Matty Groves", "Bachelorette" and "Crazy Man Michael." Of course, the downside of this is a case of depression so nasty that against it my Prozac works as well as an oregano joint.

Which raises another question: why do I seek out sad music? Sometimes a third of the songs on my MP3 player are from diagnosed depressives or artists who killed themselves one way or another, including at least one from an overdose of anti-depressants. This would be excusable in someone young, whose Romantic notions of what depression can do to a person, but not for someone who knows something of its nature. Depression makes the entire world taste like ashes, and banal ashes at that.

And perhaps that is where the attraction lies. Feeling something, even sadness, is infinitly superior to feeling nothing. People may talk about listening to sad music out of a sense of community via empathy, but really I think a closer analogy is to what Rod Steiger's character does at the end of The Pawnbroker: he pushes his hand through a spike.