Waking Ear

My parents' advice in this whole getting married thing was to talk a lot about the values we have in common, that those are the things that make the difference when it gets tough. They're probably right. But I've known for a long time that Girlfriend and I could make a go at this. She has great taste in music.

The prelude to our romance was made up of mix tapes and CDs. I made one for her that sent her shopping for some new CDs based on what she gleaned from my mix. (She never has warmed up to Cat Power, whose songs she refers to with Jack Black derision as "sad bastard music." But you can't win 'em all.) She made a mix for me that finally opened my eyes to the beauty of Biggie Smalls. I had never met someone who so embraced hip-hop radio, and she's always had a knack for separating the hits from the duds. We bonded over several forms of Latin American music. We went to shows. I tested bands out on her, playing them in my car, determining what struck a chord and what fell flat.

She once told me that she liked how I didn't get mad if she changed the radio station from the one I was listening to. Other guys did this, she said. They were missing out on the best opportunity to know her.

With music, you can peer into another person's history. You can see what they were doing from about 7th grade on, like you're examining the stump of a tree and counting the rings as they expand outward. I kept liking what I was seeing.

Since we started thinking seriously about getting married, I've urged her not to buy a CD I already own. It would mean that eventually we'd have duplicates. I like to think about our CD collections blended together on a shelf, Morrissey fitting perfectly next to Mos Def.