The full music experience...

I listen to music, a lot of it and most genres. I talk to people about music, and most are into one, or just a few, genres because of the beat or lifestyle connected to it.

I am not very hung up in genre, I am interested in what artists have to say. Or perhaps express is a better way of putting it. That is where I focus.

It's the artists that give me good, present texts I continue to listen to, those who give me challenges in

addition to the music; Regardless of instruments, beat or image.

I like the songs I feel that I totally understand. Music which express a mood, feeling or stand, in addition to contents. I so admire the skills some musicians have to work their instrument, to tear sounds from their instrument, or voice, which express emotions and create harmony in me. At times I just turn the volume up high, lie on the floor and let the music wash over me. Feeling as one with the elements.

I admit it: I'm a word freak. I do not always notice the sound cheating or if the bass sounds a bit sour. Maybe because I do not listen hard enough, and instead think: I know these songs, I know the lyrics, I know the pauses, the phrasing, the transitions, the voices... But I love to hear them again and again directly mediated through the intense communication between me and the music. I anticipate the text, a line that I might hear something new into, that gives me a new way of perceiving the song.

And often, when I hear the songs I listen to them, over and over again: the first, the second, and third time...

And listening to the music often gives me just as much, if not more, as if I read literature. You know; proper literature, reputabel literature, written by authors highly regarded for their wordcraft.

Music provides the chance to experience a contemporary community that's there without having to talk about it. In many ways both music (with its sound and lyrics) and literature activates some of the same receiver unit in me. I open myself to someone else's thoughts and engage in dialogue with another's view of the world.

I try to understand and harmonize with this view of my world, and to make it something I can relate to and understand.

When I read, I listen to someone’s voice, his view upon life, just like I do when I listen to, or read, lyrics

Sometimes I communicate with a particular song, almost arguing with it, and then I find I relate indifferent to it. It depends on how I set my mind there and then. I don’t always feel the light attitude towards life. It is not always the right thing for me to live in the moment... but some times it is.

Music is all about movement. It's all about rhythm, the communication that may change between performances in different settings.

If you know the songs well, you notice the differences in performances.

Music has two dimensions to create their expression, whereas text has one. Musical highlights invites text into dialogue with it; it can verify it, or it can disprove it.

Both the music and the text reaches the listener and goes together in a whole. The lyrics with its poetry or prose creates meanings and engage in dialogue with the reader or listener. The musical setting limitsthe lyrics. The music can be changed and varied, while the text remains unchanged.

A song engage me differently if it is performed by a band with full power, or just vocals and guitar or saxophone. Rock beat gives me a completely different experience than when I hear it acoustically. Same text, different perception; Same contents. The whole package; setting, beat, lyrics, mood... gives me a different inner experience of the contents every time I listen. And to me, that is the gift music gives me: The possebility to admire how someone out there express my own existence so much better than I can ever possibly do myself.