photo: Josh Lowe / Thrash Magazine

Something occurs to me… a couple weekends ago, my husband, son and I went to an outdoor music festival. The genre of music was heavy metal (don’t worry my son is 23, so we weren’t dragging a ten year old with us).

I am not a huge fan of heavy metal, but we had our reasons for going – one is that we do really like a couple of the acts that were playing, and the other was that we all thought it’d be an interesting social and cultural experience (it was, and we had fun!).

As we drove to the concert venue, with decidedly loud and (some would say) obnoxious music blasting forth from my hubby’s car, I announced that after that day, it would be at least two weeks before I’d be able to listen to anything more noisy than Enya. I know myself well.

And to this day, almost two weeks later, I’ve been playing meditative music on my stereo at home and in the car, or nothing at all, keeping everything very, very quiet, with utterly no desire to hear rock, metal, alternative, emo or anything else that involves screaming guitars, screaming singers, or pounding bass drums.

This morning, my husband, obviously in a happy Friday mood, emerged from the shower singing the words to one of those loud types of songs that grips your whole body (and I’m not talking about Olivia Newton John’s Let’s Get Physical), and asked me if I was listening to anything other than the Carpenters yet. Nope.

When I was a kid, too much noise would make me cry. I didn’t like loud music or loud people. And I certainly wasn’t fond of crowds. I’ve gotten over the loud music thing to an extent, but obviously still need recovery time after an event such as the one a couple weeks ago. I can also tolerate crowds in small doses (which reminds me that I won’t want to do this again for a long while due to the crowd factor). I think my sensation saturation level is very low.

Will I ever listen to metal or anything like it again? Speed/Thrash metal – not so much – I didn’t listen to it in the first place. The other stuff? For sure.

I hesitate to say this is connected directly to being introverted or a highly sensitive person, but I certainly think it’s possible. What do you think?

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download