I know people who don't listen to music actively. I mean they drive in their car with nothing on at all. They've never owned a pair of headphones. They're the ones who ask you "please, would you turn that down, please. really." I've never met an alien. But these people are really close, I mean they're practically not people at all.

I've been a musicholic since I was 5 and would sing along to the lion king soundtrack in the car. And Cats! too. I was into that feline funk.  On the bus ride home from elementary school the old white haired and pot-bellied bus driver (Bob) would play 102.7. You know, the station with the cool pop jams. That was Britney Spears era, blink 182 and sugar ray. They were the songs that were catchy. Mambo number 5 and Living la vida loca. I would sing along to the thong song and the real slim shady.

but then what's middle school about? Being cool no doubt. And what's cool? Blink 182 and Good Charlotte. Grungy and faux-rebellious. And maybe there was this inkling that music was more than just a sing along. And what are those bands my sister is into? Weezer was a first love and my first music relationship and my first concert.

But wait 9th grade and I'm taking history and maybe there is some tradition to what music is. And that Kurt Cobain fellow died when I was 5. And The Clash always seemed like black and white documentaries of a Farehnheit 451-esque city. What does punk mean? And why did Cobain kill himself? But what did he listen to when he was a kid? The 60s and sex the 60s and guitar the 60s and the beatles and everything that's ever come since.

But still it's cool to be into Classic Rock and Led Zeppelin are gone and there is more to explore and I eat up my sister's library and soon enough she's looking at mine. And there is ever more history. Dylan and folk music and this stuff actually means something and makes change and is it true it's all in the romantic past? And it can be poetry and it can be sung to me personally by Nick Drake. Or it can make you move, the band and van morrison and that's all fine too. And my mom always listened to classical in the car and I never studied it like I studied the people with the lyrics and the people who sang only to me, but in those late night early morning car rides, it's only Handel that I listen to and Mozart and maybe the Piano is the prettiest voice to have ever been born.

And maybe I shouldn't have held my nose above rap so long because it's from my time and it's as real as anything else. There's Nas and biggie and New York must have been calling me well before I arrived. It's the feeling of these streets and it's a feeling of the repressed and it's a feeling of a tradition that still begs to be released. And when I arrived here I only found more, more libraries and more oldstuff and more new stuff and wow I never knew I liked to dance so much. And no I wouldn't listen to this crazy electronic distorted stuff on my own but right now it's making me move and I don't give a damn the rhythm is skewed.

I search for new music every day. To go a week without a song is not even a nightmare to me because it is so inconceivable. I'd just sing to myself and find the beat to my step. And how I move through music is how I move through life, ears and open and eyes poking into every dark corner. I am an urban explorer and don't doubt that there are treasures to behold and albums to find wherever I go. People say there are too many books to go through in a life time. But it must be the same with music too. There is no end only more imaginable dimensions and I want to walk on all of them.

I have a friend who loves metal. It's all he listens to. Heavy metal, death metal, thrash metal, power metal, speed metal. I bet you didn't know there were that many types. His hair is long and his shirt collection reaches into the 50s, mostly vintage band shirts, Anthrax, Guns N' Roses, Pantera, Van Halen, and so on and so on to the very brink of his closet space. He has leather jackets and bandannas and collected concert pins and a lifetime of bruises from the middle of the mosh pit. He and three friends went as KISS last Halloween. They did it right.

Now I hate metal. I find nothing redeeming about it or enticing. I would never put on a metal song just to listen to a metal song. And many people feel the same way as me. That metal was just a weird phenomenon worth disremembering.

Once the two of us shared our musical histories. His started with Van Halen and I think he admits it never really went further. From Van Halen he moved like you did Robin, only through a very particular genre, metal. And he is a master. He's found it all and uncovered every venue, one-hit wonder, classic, and amazing personal history. It's his fascination and though the golden days of Metal are over, he is still exploring its depths.

And knowing him it's a perfect fit. Or maybe it's molded him to that perfect fit. He is all about loudness. He goes wild and it's when he has most fun, when he can wile out and be him at 100 decibels. To see him at a metal concert is to catch him at a brilliance of energy. Right there up front smiling through the sweat and the indecipherable lyrics jumping along with a crowd of his metalheads.

And when I go with him to these shows I'm right up there with him. Not because I love the music or even recognize the song, but because it's an invitation into his psyche. And it's fun, and I'm smiling too, because I'm as much a part of it despite my different musical history and in that moment I'm part of his musical lineage. And it's the same when he comes with me to electronic shows and we do our best to rave like the floor was made of lava and our feet want to live entirely in the air.

I love trading iPods with my friends. We'll spend a week with one another's music library and peek into every nook and cranny figuring them out as we figure out where we overlap. In our generation we listen to music non-stop. It's been a decade of this. How many years of my life have been spent in some way or another listening to music, whether in the background or raging at the front of a blasting crowd? There must be something to it that molds us as we move through every other sector of life. Just how, I'm not sure, and I definitely couldn't pin point my personality alongside my tastes in music, but it is a pretty solid way at trying to figure out a friend.