Pandora, Youth and Music Enjoyment

Roxi downloaded Pandora on her iPhone a while back but I had never heard her use it until the other night. For those that are unfamiliar, Pandora is an amazing internet radio website. There aren't really stations per se but as you listen, it creates customized playlists on the fly based on your feedback (thumbs-up or thumbs-down) on the song currently playing. Anyway, Roxi has been using it quite a bit on her phone and this afternoon I started feeling very nostalgic and melancholy while it played in the background. My life has always been defined by music. Good and bad memories and feelings are unconsciously triggered by single familiar notes. In an instant, I'm somewhere in my life re-experiencing the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of those times that shaped who I am for whatever reason. Today was different though. Instead of a particular song, I realized that these feelings were due to the sound quality of the music coming from the iPhone's mono speaker. It took me back to my childhood listing to a very cheap radio waiting for a great song to play so that I could tape it for repeated listenings. That little me would be amazed with the almost 700 hours of digital audio on my computer yet I'm amazed that I find myself appreciating the poor quality sound coming from that mono iPhone speaker more than I've enjoyed music in quite a while.