something I am grateful for today

I had a bad morning (actually my whole family did), and getting off to a bad start put me in an unusually negative and curmudgeonly mood. I found it very hard to think of anything to be grateful for today, and was quite prepared to skip this. However, after allowing some more time to elapse, I now have this:

I am grateful that I have [finally] learned that my moods are filters thru which I view my world and my life. If somebody who usually brings joy to my life happens to bring me crap, I don't start wondering “why they've changed” or focus on how I felt about the crap at that moment. It's become a lot easier to let things go. Crap comes and goes. Bad moods as a result of crap come and go. The core that usually brings joy to my life is still there and will show its face again... in fact, it will show its face again sooner if I don't dwell on the crap and the bad mood.

I wasn't always like this, but it's something I can do today. Better perspective or whatnot, I guess...

music or lyrics - and what IS music anyhoo?

Someone (hi, jsmitty_o) recently said something about being either a lyrics person or a music person. My first impulse is to say that I am a music person. Proofs abound. I like a lot of jazz and classical music that is utterly lyric-less. I do like some jazz vocals but tend to prefer instrumentals. Classical vocals [i.e., opera] almost always drives me bats. So: music.

I also assume this has something to do with why I can derive so much pleasure from jpop, even though it's almost exclusively vocal - if I was a lyrics person it'd really bug me that I “don't know what they're saying” [a complaint I often hear from jpop non-fans]. But recently I noticed something even further:

I have a few examples of jpop artists who have recorded in both Japanese and English - in some cases, the same song recorded in two versions. The backing instrumental is identical. The voice singing is identical. The only difference is the language of the vocals.

And in pretty much every case, I prefer the Japanese version.

When the lyrics are in English, I notice them. (Especially when they're not brilliant, which is pretty standard for pop music.) The lyrics distract me from enjoying the music as fully as I'm used to. More to the point, I realize now that the actual sound of the Japanese language itself is a kind of music for me and I miss it when it's not there. So that definitely makes me a music person, I guess, dunnit? How bout that. Huh.