Music Soothes the Savage Beast... On the Road

If only they'd thought to give King Kong a giant pair of headphones playing a soundtrack of calming jungle noises, maybe he wouldn't have lost his temper, escaped captivity, and trampled New York City.  How many of you would never survive your commute to work without iTunes and feel this is doubly true for traveling?

One of my travel essentials is music.  As a child I'd get yelled at for having a Walkman, a Discman, and a backpack heavier than me because it was stuffed full of cassettes and CDs.  There was a whole lot of thought and time put into selecting which albums to bring, and then to make mix tapes for the songs you couldn't do without from the CDs you were leaving behind.  With the advent of MP3 players, my back pain subsided -- er, I mean, it became easier to take your music collection with you.  I currently have a 16Gig iPhone and have no want for more day to day music storage.

I think many will agree one of the greatest things about music in the digital age is the ability to create playlists.  However, great as I think playlists are, I will confess that I rarely utilize them nowadyas.  What with capabilities to play songs by artist, album, genre, the shuffle features etc.  I find little need in coming up with my own "mixes" day to day.

A notable exception is when I travel -- where I like to break down my music into "sleeping" music and "waking" music.  I have issues with white noise/dull roars like plane engines, so on a long haul flight, if we're in the air for 9 hours, I will have earphones in for 9 hours (be it music, movie audio, or whatever).  So it gets pretty important to have the right musical atmosphere when you're trying to fall asleep in a cramped economy seat.  There's nothing more annoying (though it is mildly comical) than finally falling asleep only to startle yourself silly when your iTunes shuffles from Radiohead to The Offspring.  On the flipside, when you're trying to rouse yourself from a lot of self-medication, a steady stream of Coldplay is not going to help you wake up, you're gonna need some techno.

Perhaps that's a very simplified use of the playlists features, but it works for me.  Music and comfort have always been tied together in my world, and this is how I adapt it to travel.