*Lyrics by Madonna, from Music.
Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I almost always use song lyrics as my blog post titles. I don’t really know when I began doing it on purpose, but I do know that music has been a central part of my experience of the home improvement process. Perhaps it was my attempt to make the renovation seem more like the best parts of my summer in Boston at art school, where our loooong work days were punctuated by a variety of different musical styles, contributed by a variety of different people. Perhaps it’s because Dave and his crew started out happily playing the radio (yes, the actual, commercial soaked, ten-song-per-day playing radio) during their workdays and I just couldn’t handle it. We were already squeezed into only one-third of our downstairs, and half of our upstairs (and by half I mean two of four rooms, but not half of the square footage – it was also probably more like a third) and sharing the airwaves with craptastic music was where I drew the line. Either way, we quickly remedied the situation by supplying loud computer speakers and a cord for a wi-fi equipped iPod.
Luckily for me, Brad was technically savvy (as you would expect any electrician to be) and he happily switched from radio to iPod/Pandora for work motivation. We quickly discovered areas where we didn’t all agree (some of Brad’s music was a bit too, well, let’s just say it didn’t work with Eric’s love of classical music), and found areas where we were all willing to take turns. I say we since I was busy stalking the Teams taking pictures for the blog. I didn’t really have any we-type, hands-on input until much later in the process (ok, except for the design part, but that was primarily conceptual – I wasn’t wielding any hammers). Pretty soon one song from the day would stand out, get in my head, and by the time I was sifting through photos of the day I’d have lyrics in my head. I started to use that experience to inspire the titles, so I could more accurately express my mood, feelings, and general mental state on any given day.
Recently on Door Sixteen’s blog I came across 8tracks, a website for making mixes using internet radio (so you can hear the whole song). I decided to do a blog title mix, just to see how my songs went together, and to see if there were any themes. Turns out, there were quite a few songs that really went together. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting to know my own musical preferences better, or perhaps because home improvement taps into a certain part of my brain, but whatever the reason I ended up with a pretty sweet little mix.
Check it out, have a listen, browse around, explore new music, and enjoy a little slice of the so happy home life. xoxo