I’m not sure how I came across The Knife.

That’s one drawback to having access to so much music in digital form, actually, is that you can have so much you can’t keep track of where it came from. The nice thing about CDs (or cassettes or LPs or anything else more tangible) is that you can look at it and know where it came from.

Not necessarily in a music-geek High Fidelity way, either. But I’d know, for example, why The Knife’s eponymous CD was on my shelf. As it is, I’ve got this song from somewhere, and I can’t recall where the reference came from.

Regardless, I woke up with the opening line to the lyric for Reindeer in my head this morning: Reindeer, reindeer, reindeer / I caught one of your horns.

That should give you a sense of what The Knife is like. Playful, political, vaguely experimental, and a bit weird.

I like them.

I went through my Bob Dylan phase when I was 22 and living in Arizona. Away from home for the first time – really away from home, not just on a trip – I was homesick and lonely, and Dylan – particularly early Dylan – spoke to me.

I think every young man has a Dylan. The same way they all have a Kerouac. It may not be Bob or Jack that speaks to every young man, but they all have their guides through those dark periods.

I haven’t needed Dylan since. Not in that way. I’ve appreciated his music and was overjoyed when Lynne took me to see him in concert (even if he was upstaged by Joni Mitchell).

But I haven’t needed him. That’s a good thing.

I’ve been nostalgic, lately. It’s something I tend towards, anyway, but I think I’ve just entered a phase of reflection. Which is one reason why Dylan’s newest CD, Modern Times, sounds so good to me. It’s not old Dylan, it’s decidely new and, well, modern.

But it reminds me of early Dylan, and makes me remember when I needed him.

Courtesy of Rich, I have a new name. You all must use it when addressing me.

Henceforth, I shall be known as Blainiac.

Watch out for me. I’m coming.

Caught an interesting segment on Oprah today in which a researcher was talking about how she had identified particular sounds that newborn babies make, that correspond to reflex responses to things like hunger, pain, tiredness.

Smart research. Smart woman. At the age of four her mother would play Mozart, which she would play back on the piano, note for note, after hearing a piece only once.

She said that this was an example of having a photographic memory for sound.

Okay. Maybe not so smart.

So that I (and my wife) can find unique and wonderful t-shirts to wear. T-shirts that express my unique and wonderful personality better than, say, a swoosh.