Mind. Blown.

What does it mean to have your mind blown?  What is the criteria for something to be mind blowing?  I suppose if we could answer that question, we'd all be millionaires.  Or would everyone knowing the secret devalue it completely?  I'm pretty sure no one "knows" the secret because it is different for every person - and probably different for each person every day. 

I do know that something that blows my little mind to smithereens today might not have any effect on me tomorrow at all. (hang on just a sec while I google "effect vs. affect"...ok, we're good)  I might listen to a song or album today and it clears my mind, gets all the bad stuff out of there, or helps me think through some of it and that's awesome.  Or I can focus on the entire arrangement or the sound of someone's fingertips on guitar strings and think of nothing else until the song is over.  Both, serious mind blowing events.  But tomorrow I might skip right over that same song without a second thought.  The mind is such a fickle place!

I saw someone tweet a while ago about how the things that people were calling "mind blowing" disturbed him, I assume because he didn't find it to be quality stuff.  At first I agreed with him, but now that I've mulled it over more, I'm not so sure.  It's a similar argument to "What Gives Music Value" - it is all in the ear/mind/heart of the beholder.

A song doesn't have to be technically perfect to have a powerful effect on someone.  It doesn't have to be earth shattering or change the world.  All it really has to do is be the right song at the right time for the right person.  With such infinite variables, the songs that could do that must also be infinite.  Perhaps "Macarena" blew someone's mind in 1993...no, nevermind, that shit didn't happen.

I use the term a lot and every time I say it, I mean it.  Right then, when I listened to whatever it was, my mind was blown.  Either I couldn't believe how amazing the guitar sounded ("Go Where You Belong" by Ryan Schmidt) or perhaps the lyrics hit home and hit hard ("Remark" by Rachel Platten) or maybe just the overall awesomeness of it knocked me off my feet (Gooicide by Betty Goo or Modern Love by Matt Nathanson). 

So be open to it.  Be open to letting something crawl inside your mind and make a nest.  There are all kinds of wonderful things out there and you never know what's going to do it for you.  Maybe it's one line out of a song, or one song on an album, or an entire hour (or 46.7 minutes) of awesome.  But trust me, it's out there, so let it happen.