I Got the Music in Me

"Life is just complex simplicity thug it out..."
So I changed the name of my blog. Like the previous one, this is a song title. This one is by Teedra Moses, of course, the previous title was a song by Anthony Hamilton.  Music is a huge part of my life.  Unfortunately for me, I'm not talented enough to be able to perform it (not that that stops me from trying), but it is indelibly intertwined with all aspects of my life.

I think I have my mom to thank for that.  She was and still is a music junkie.  I remember the weekends when she would do her cleaning and she would pull out her records and my brothers and I would be blessed by the sounds of Average White Band, Minnie Riperton, Angela Bofill among others.  She was the master of the mixtape long before K-Slay and DJ Whoo Kid.  It was also music that helped my mom to sort out her feelings; it helped her to figure out her next move when she was formulating a plan.  Years later, now that I'm well into my 30's nothing's changed except besides the records, she playing music off of Itunes and making mixed CD's.

Me?  I'm pretty much the same.  I love music so much that I identify all the highlights of my life by what music was playing at the time.  My childhood like I said above was mostly soundtracked by the awesome record collection of my mother.  I find it kinda funny that as I would flip through my mom's records, I would find some with other people's names written on them.  Was my mom a dirty album thief?  Hmmm, this question still goes unanswered today.  To this day, I'll be in my car and some obscure old song will come on, and I'll begin to sing it word for word.  Yes, I was programmed well.

In jr high, Bobby Brown was my "King of R and B" long before he was Whitney Houston's.  He sang directly to me as I reflected on the melancholia of unrequited crushes and "like" gone wrong.  I secretly hated on that girl he grinded on in the "Roni" video.  My other favorite was Guy.  My summers in New York moved along to the sounds of their album "Guy" blasting from my Aunt's Sony walkman.

High School, ah high school.  My family got our first CD player and we were forever changed.  I played  Toni Tony Tone nonstop.  It was high school where I met the love of my life.  When we broke up the first time I had "One Last Cry" and "After the Love Is Gone" on repeat, thanks Bryan Mcknight for helping me cope.  I moved on to college, and those were my heavy Mary J Blige and Faith Evans years. It was also in college that I got turned on to other types of music thanks to my Guyanese roommate, my new African friends, and the rockin' parties that the Latin sororities and fraternities would throw.  And who couldn't forget neo soul?  College brought me Deangelo, Lauren Hill, Erykah Badu, and Jill Scott.  No one was angrier than me when XM relegated their neo soul channel to internet only?  How the hell was I going to get my Deborah Bond and Kindred the Family Soul fix?  I was so moved by this new sound that I found, that it's pretty much all I listen to even now.

Adult life and all it entails has made me put music on the backburner a bit.  My memories now are of wedding songs from my and friend's weddings, and songs that I catch a glimpse of in movies and on tv shows that I can't get out of my mind (Donnie Hathaway's "Giving Up", One Republic's "Come Home").  But I don't love music any less.  It's what soothes me after a long day of work on the drive home.  It entertains me (and my colleagues) at work.  And it punctuates the quiet moments me and the husband share sometimes.  It will always be there.

Now my blog title.  Basically I did want my readers to understand what makes me tick, hence the previous title.  But I like the new title too.  My life is very simple.  Having no children affords me that I suppose.   But nothing is ever really as simple as it seems and that is where the complexity comes in.  I'm a multifaceted gal married to a multi faceted guy, and our life together is complex simplicity.