This sounds like a self evident thing to say, and it is! But when someone goes through my entire Facebook profile and notices the music taste I display through my selection of groups and I start thinking about how much or little I've listened to them lately, that self evident realisation is suddenly glaring in my face, along with memories of the emotions I went through back then and that are, at best, strangers in my mind today!

The one that was most glaringly strange in my displayed collection is Nine Inch Nails, and the reason for the strangeness is that it's deeply associated with a period of my life when I deeply depressed, and NIN resonated with me with his very depressive songs. I mean, just the sentence "Grey would be the color if I had a heart" (from "Something I Can Never Have" in "Pretty Hate Machine") is so profound, and it was clearly how I felt back then, heartless, grey, nothing. Today, it's just something I don't want in my life any more, and clearly not how I feel about myself any more, and just trying to listen to NIN just leaves a bland feeling, or a sharp pain that this was how I once saw myself, and really doesn't give me anything.

So I've stopped listening to NIN and similar. I've tried, and the same thing happens over and over; I simply stop within half a song and look for something else. I'm just keeping the songs around for ... well I can't really figure out for what reason... Time to clean, maybe?

Seen from a totally different angle, I now listen to music I would never be caught listening to 10+ years ago. di Leva is the most glaring example, his songs were completely incomprehensible more than 10 years ago. When I started listening to his songs a few years ago, I found myself filled and connected, and recognised where I was at the time, in discovery of love at a level I hadn't been able to see before, and felt he was talking directly to me... and still do.