On daunting tasks

Some time after I started writing for Melophobe, my dad took an interest in the musicians I was reviewing. He seemed impressed that I could rattle off trivia, recognize covers, recall collaborators, and pull first-listening experiences from memory. I've spent my entire conscious life doing this, of course. It's just that I have a larger audience now. The point of this story is that my dad mentioned being unfamiliar with the music scene of the last two decades, which are my decades of expertise, so I offered to make him a retrospective. After working on this for quite a while, the project has taken on a mind of its own. At this point, I've split it into the 1990s and the 2000s. Each folder has more than 40 songs in it, and I'm nowhere near done. I'm tossing everything I can think of into the folders and will sort them out later to remove repeat artists, though the important ones will surely be represented multiple times. I just realized I don't even have any Pearl Jam on here yet, and have begun running through their catalog to mitigate the situation. This should be easy. It isn't. I have called in outside reinforcements.

What's my conclusion in the middle of this endeavor? No matter how old I get, I will always be the thirteen-year-old girl standing awkwardly outside Kurt Cobain's house in my Kurt Cobain memorial t-shirt, clamoring to reach the tiniest fragment of the things that fuel my life.



Perhaps my dad will like his present now that he has the backstory, and won't just comment that everyone is ripping off the Beatles (who were ripping off the musicians who came before them). Back to the music library, regardless.