I am having a giant love affair with College Library. No, I am not at the library merely because I have procrastinated and left everything for the last week of school. Instead, I found many other libraries there: shared music libraries via the WiscWorld server. This hidden treasure makes my library experience much more enjoyable as College Library serves as a wonderful music venue.
People can share their music with anyone connected to the network. These libraries hinder me from completing any work since searching through them is quite interesting and time-consuming. Let's just say that it seems a typical UW student has a very eclectic taste in music. One person's music library carried everything from Nas to Phish and Bright Eyes to Britney Spears-weird.
The results have provided insight into what people actually listen to, and the music in a person's library can definitely tell a lot about a particular person.
It is interesting as each day it seems more and more people listen to music as they walk around campus and create their own \soundtrack of their life.""
With thousands of songs at our disposal, we can walk to a song that complements our mood, relates to what we are thinking, emphasizes the weather conditions or plays on our emotions at the time. Music plays into the scenes of our lives, with each step making our experiences much more memorable. It is an expression of who we are as individuals.
It is fun seeing people walk with headphones because, at times, you can catch them getting into their music and doing things they might not normally do in public. Many factors emphasize how attached people are to their music when they listen, highlighting the hidden rock star within all of us.
The occasional lip movement demonstrates the wonderful lip-synch ability of a person. The fact they know the words is extremely impressive. Also, if you see someone walking in a specific beat-like pattern, they must be walking to the rhythm of their song. If you are lucky, you might even see an occasional air guitarist or a pencil drum beat.
Each of us has different tastes in music, but it is still a unifying element, just like it unites us at Helen C. White. People can relate to others through their music choices alone. This idea shows how music remains important in everyone's life.
When meeting a new person, a topic of conversation that commonly arises is music. People often become friends with others because they share a special musical connection. Karaoke bars bind us together as we sing in front of friends and strangers regardless if we have any singing ability. Concerts unite thousands of people as they congregate together to promote and celebrate one common cause-music.
While there are varying degrees of attachment to music, everybody listens to it, has their favorite band and their favorite song. We live in a society where the rock symbol competes with the peace symbol. Music is a powerful force that transcends time, distance and cultures-we can still play classical music written by composers hundreds of years ago.
As Jim Morrison said, ""When the music's over / turn out the light."" My wick will burn bright, but for now, I am at my end. Thanks for being such a great audience; rock on.
Beth Wick's last column runs Thursday. To wish any fond farewells, e-mail her at eawick@wisc.edu
