incompatibility

She would send him Jonathan Richman; he would send her Aphex Twin ...

"One of the great things about [Sarah] Vowell is the feeling that she is someone who GETS IT when it comes to music. She has a great piece about the beauty and importance of the mix tape, describing that she was in a relationship with a guy who was great except for one insurmountable problem — His musical taste sucked. She would send him Jonathan Richman; he would send her Aphex Twin and other ambient music:

"That music of his did not bother me when we were making out.... It bothered me in those ponderous solitary moments when I asked myself if I could really love a man who did not think, as I did, that a band with two drummers playing two drum sets was some kind of a mortal sin, just as I'm sure he asked himself if he could really fall for such an oldfangled, verse-chorus-verse relic like me.

Which might be shallow but our incompatible music pointed to incompatible world views. He was the ocean, preferring waves of sound to wash over him with no beginning, middle or end. I'm more of a garden hose, fancying short bursts of emotion that are aimed somewhere and get turned on and off real quick." "