Sometimes Silence is Golden, Sometimes Not

For a couple of days, I have not been listening to music in the car.

It’s kind of nice.

I find myself thinking differently than I would if music were playing.

When music is playing, I tend to be thinking about the song, singing along sometimes, but often just imagining singing and playing along (though I don’t actually know how to play any instruments) … which is kind of embarrassing to admit. Interestingly, however, this tendency to imagine yourself doing the thing you are watching or listening to is common and has something to do with the mirror neurons in our brains, which are deeply connected with our emotional response, our drive to socialize and our ability to feel empathy.

Recently, too, through a series of technical ineptitudes on my part, my musical selections have been taken over by my daughter. First, I switched to a car that will play music, via Bluetooth, that is stored on my phone. Yay! No more destroying CDs by playing them on the pot-holed streets of Houston. Except I didn’t have any music stored on my phone. And for some reason, internet radio doesn’t work well on my phone in the car.

So, I do listen to music through my phone. But my iPhone, for reasons I don’t fully understand, shares music with my daughter’s and my son’s iPhones. Whenever they buy music, it shows up on my phone. Which is great, except my daughter is going through a period where she finds music with silly sexual lyrics funny. So, Nelly sings, “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes,” LMFAO insists, “I am not a whore …I just like doing it” and Jason Derulo wants you to "talk dirty to me."

Sometimes silence is preferable, but sometimes it’s fun to tune in to someone else.