The Intimacy of Music

Scrolling through someone else’s old iPod has the potential for unearthing embarrassing moments of their past. These flashes of bad taste could speak to larger issues of incompatibility. As you get to know someone, the sharing and the overlap of things you love, things you hate, and things that make you dance around the room in joy but you don’t really admit to anyone are the space where intimacy happens. The opportunity for self-discovery with hundreds of her songs in my hand short-circuited the teasing out of that process. The most cringe-worthy thing I found was a product of its time and the most fist-pumping thing I found was the right song by a relatively obscure pop band. No tectonic shifts ahead.