Today I rewarded myself for returning to employment by ordering a new iPod shuffle. My current iPod shuffle is almost two years old, and is of the archaic white plastic casing that resembles a medical device. Its formerly white cord has taken on an unsanitary gray pallor from being hung around my neck while jogging.
The new iPod shuffle comes with an optional free engraving on its case, so I decided to scour the internet for a meaningful musical quote that was 44 characters or less. Here is what I found, without attributions:
“Music is what feelings sound like.”
“Music is love in search of a word.”
“Music fills the infinite between two souls.”
“Music is an outburst of the soul.”
“Music is the art of thinking with sounds.”
“Music is the soul of language.”
“Music is only love looking for words.”
“Where words fail, music speaks.”
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
All these struck me as sappy, so I picked “Without music, life would be an error,” said by Friedrich Nietzsche. Due to the character limitations and general unease with the Aryan connotations, I did not include the second part of the quote, which is “The German imagines even God singing songs.” Engraving my iPod shuffle with a Nietzsche quote makes me kind of a jerk, but I like how it sounds as if Nietzsche deduced this prognosis by employing a precise philological method while in the throes of a Wagner binge.
