SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

In a New Year’s effort to force myself back into more consistent blogging habits — it’s hard to believe that I used to be good for at least four posts per week, not so long ago — I created a meme for myself, so that for at least 36 days, I can’t use “I have nothing to write about” as an excuse.

Some time ago, my iTunes account and I threw together a pair of 18-song CDs that I play in my car at eardrum-rending volume when I’m driving to the voiceover studio. For me as an actor, emotional energy is vitally important to my confidence, which in turn is essential to my performance. The more juice I can generate before I step in front of the microphone, the better off I am. With all that’s gone on in my life over these past many moons, I can’t always gin up that energy from whole cloth. Music enables me to get there. (The technique has proven effective against my persistent social anxiety also.)

These 36 songs have only one thing in common: They pump me up. They span a broad range of genres, from bubblegum pop and arena rock to heavy metal and hip-hop. Some of them are among my favorite songs — or at least are songs by some of my favorite artists — of all time. Others are songs by artists of whom I’m not particularly a fan, except for this one example. A couple I like only because they’ve got a good beat, and I can butt-dance to them in the driver’s seat of my Subaru.

All of them provide adrenaline.

I’m going to cover these in the order in which they appear in iTunes’ juvenile alphabetizing system (first names first, which annoys the devil out of the copy editor in me), with the exception of the first song, which I moved to the front of the line for lyrical appropriateness. Over these 36 posts, you’ll learn something about each of these songs — and probably more than you ever wanted to know about me.

Just so we’re clear: I won’t finish this project in 36 consecutive days. I don’t usually blog on the weekends, and Fridays are reserved for comic art and related folderol. I will probably interrupt on occasion to write about other matters of moment. But I will finish it.

The adrenaline rush begins tomorrow.

This entry was posted on January 3, 2011 at 12:46 pm and is filed under 36 Days of Adrenaline, Soundtrack of My Life, SwanStuff, That's Cool!. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.