Hearts with knees

I know I shouldn't listen to music while I'm riding my bicycle, but I do it anyway.

Today I was listening to Eric Clapton's Reptile. One of the wonderful things about living in Japan is the video stores, where you can also rent CDs. Don't tell anybody. This is a well-kept secret. If the record companies knew that consumers were renting CDs and downloading the music onto their iPods and therefore NEVER HAVING TO BUY A CD EVER AGAIN they would ban the practice immediately.

I had read both good and bad review of Reptile, and wanted to know what it was like, but the bad reviews were bad enough that I didn't want to actually buy it.

I agree it lacks Clapton's usual edge. On the other hand, it is perfect cycling (or train commuting) music. It is not demanding, but it does hold my attention because he is so damned good, without even trying. That is exactly what you want on a commute. You don't want to be so distracted that you miss your station, but you do want to be distracted from the crush of the General Unwashed you are sharing your space with. Reptile fits the bill perfectly.

Unfortunately there is one song that holds my attention in entirely the wrong way, with a really bad metaphor. Perhaps it's just me. Perhaps you have to be a language teacher to be so distracted by a metaphor. But when he sings, "The sound of her voice brings your heart to its knees," I get a very strange and distracting image appearing in my head. Hearts don't HAVE knees, normally, because they don't have legs, but the heart in this strange and distracting image does have legs, and the legs have knobbly little knees. These knees distract me horribly, and I wish they wouldn't.