Music washes away the dust from the soul?

I have a confession: I kinda like having a blog. When I thought about the concept, I could never quite see myself in the role, but now that I've had time (ie: a little under 24 hours) to think about it, I quite enjoy this place of refuge. Immediate correction to that statement: "refuge" might not be the right word for it, but a place to come and "relax".

Anyway, now that's said, let me get down to my first REAL post.

One of my many joys in life is music. Seriously, I love music. It's something that I've often related to novels with their endless ability to create another world, another reality, that we can be taken away to for even just the shortest of periods. The thing that music has that most books don't (mind you, I'm not going to make any "sweeping generalizations" because they invariably come back to bite me) is sound. Sound allows this world to completely penetrate and inhabit our body. One of my friends often repeats this quote (I think it's from the film August Rush, but I haven't seen it so I can't say for sure): "Music washes away the dust from the soul". I think this admittedly quite trite sentence nonetheless contains a certain amount of truth. The escape that music provides us allows us to forget the troubles of life (physical and mental), allowing us to come back to Earth with a cleaned slate.

Consequently, I have always had a very visceral response to music, which creates a very eclectic music library. At this very moment I'm listening to Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, the music video for which, according to YouTube, has been viewed 186,056,283 times. I am also currently feeling a very tight and wallowing feeling in my stomach. This is because I feel on edge, uptight about this music. Don't get me wrong, I can certainly applaud Lady Gaga as an artist, and I think that it's important for people to go outside of their comfort zone, and what better thing to do that than art. But, she is never an artist (at least knowing her current repertoire, I can't claim to have any foresight as to what Lady Gaga will do next) I would ever profess to like or listen to with any sort of regularity.

All of this is to share with you some of my favourite songs at the moment (when possible, I had tried to include a video or MP3):