Spotlight \  And Now, a Less Informed Opinion  Dave Eggers //
April 12, 2004  1. I play songs in endless loops. When a song is
new to me, and there’s something about it that kills me, I’ll
listen to it in an auto-repeat delirium for days on end. When
they invented the repeat button on the CD player, my life was
changed irrevocably (as were the lives of every roommate I’ve
had since). I’m not sure when this started or why I do it. I
know that, in part, I’m trying to learn the song’s language, and
sometimes that doesn’t come quickly. I’ve never been adept at
new languages-I feel like I’m reaching into the math quadrant of
my head, adesolate and unforgiving place-and music sometimes
hides there. So I study songs, try to break them down, find
their order. And this takes time.  It started when I was around
11 and just getting exposed to non-Top 40 radio. There was a
time shortly before when I thought that Billy Joel was the
world’s foremost music-maker, that Crystal Gayle was right
behind him, and that what Rush w