Stop reading my mind!

Anyone else feel eerily creeped out when it seems that your very mechanical contraption of an iPod is reading your mind? It is kind of like that stupid machine reaches deep into your soul and pulls out all the feelings you are trying to avoid. All you have to do is put it on shuffle and BAM! You are overwhelmed with the songs that follow and how they fill your mind with the words you don't want to hear, that is, of course, until it plays "I Shot the Sheriff" by Bob Marley. (I swear it was in self defense)

In my mind, it seems that you are just living your life, doing the daily grind and for some unknown reason your iPod knows the songs of your heart.

This all brings up that idea of Art Imitating Life, or is it the other way around? Life Imitating Art?

Aristotle looked at it as Art Imitating Life....Oscar Wilde saw it the other way. "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

Mimesis: Representation or imitation of the real world in art and literature.

Anti-Memesis: Obviously the opposite of the above definition.

How does this all play into your iPod reading your mind? Well, I guess we can gather that through Wilde's eyes our life is imitating art. I would say that we bend our feelings that are repressed to fit the songs that come across the car speakers and headphones. I believe that we make our life imitate art. We see ourselves in the music we listen to, the books we read and the movies we watch. This is just my opinion, but it would seem that is the most explicable reason for why every song on our iPod seems to relate to how we are feeling at any particular moment.

Of course though, it is a completely different ball game when you are the artist. In this sense, nine times out of ten I would have to object to Wilde's view. If you are the artist then of course the art is going to imitate art. The art IS your life. I can agree with this from my experience as a dancer. You put yourself  into every creation and it is yourself that fuels the artistic outcome.

No matter how we try and explain it.....it is still creepy, and sometimes comforting, when your iPod "reads your mind".

“Music is what feelings sound like.”