Music Soothes Even the Savage Tilt Monkey

The last week or so I've been noticing an inordinate number of mistakes on my part, culminating in today's 75 minute Garden City session about which you can read in the next post. There are many reasons I could be noticing these mistakes, some bad, some good, and some neutral.

1. I could be playing bad.
2. I could be playing the same but just have gained enough awareness to notice these mistakes.
3. I could be getting unlucky and just ending up in a lot of tough spots.

What happens though is that noticing a mistake on my part tends to make me angry. I get upset and tilt a little. If I mess up another hand, it gets worse. And pretty soon I'm an angry tilt monkey. Just two days ago at Bay 101 I dropped $1800 in about 2 hours, through a combination of bad play and bad luck. I went off for 7.5 big bets (!!!) with AKo on a flop of A66. MG, a guy whose mere presence at the table tilts me, played the hand expertly, by donking the flop and not stopping betting until I called down his turn 3-bet. Of course he had quads. I'm not sure how much this affects my play, but it has to be some. And I need to get a handle on it soon or things are going to get ugly.

So today as I was driving home from Garden City after 75 tilt and rage inducing minutes of live 20/40, I was flipping through radio stations and settled on a new favorite of mine, MOViN 99.7. Objectively I have to say this is one of the worst radio stations in the history of music. Basically they play 10 minutes of commercials every 30 minutes, and the 20 minutes of music is just a 7 song loop of Don't Trust a Ho, I Got a Feelin, Hotel Room, Run This Town, Boom Boom Pow, Disco Stick, and literally one other wild card song at random such as Stronger or Just Dance. Then they cut to commercial (after talking about how all these people have switched to MOVin), then they repeat the 7 songs with a different wild card. How on Earth do I like listening to this music? On the way home I had a scary moment of clarity.

The primary measurable thing that makes music "good" to someone is it's ability to evoke a strong emotional response. For most of my life I've enjoyed slower, sadder songs and basically steered as far clear of hip hop as I could. These songs, such as Color Blind or better yet Slow Motion, were always able to evoke a very strong emotional response out of me. Now admittedly I did like and respond to other, happier songs, but things like this were always my stand by. Now, as I've gotten older I've almost completely abandoned this depressing ballads and replaced them with 7 song up-beat hip hop loops. Why? The obvious answer is that I used to be a happier person, and therefore sad songs were able to evoke an emotional response that felt stronger as it was further from my natural state. Today I'm less happy and energetic and therefore the catchy hip hop songs have gained ground since they now move me further from my emotional mean. Scary shit? I think so.