I'm walking down a long corridor in my head and the doors are all closed. I'm listening to my iPod. 17,000 songs are in my left front pocket and I want to talk about them but I don't know what to say.

Ramiro Musotto's Sudaka was waiting for me in my mail box when we returned from our trip to Columbia, South Carolina. I felt a rush of adrenaline when I saw the manilla envelope with the Fast Horse return address label in the upper left hand corner. I started tearing the package open as I walked from the mailbox back to my apartment.

The first time I listened to Sudaka was while I was in the car, running errands that were put off until after our trip to South Carolina. I was making the lefthand turn onto Sparkman Drive when I realized I was already three songs into the record. That surprised me. I didn't think I'd zoned out while listening but I couldn't remember shifting from "Caminho" to "Ginga" to "Raio." I started the album over and it happened again; "Raio" seemed to come from out of nowhere. Musotto knows how to sequence a record because the flow of these opening tracks is flawless.

I listened to the entire record over the course of my trip to return a faulty remote control to Comcast and to rent We Own The Night; my first ever Blu-Ray DVD rental. I liked what I heard but didn't have a strong sense of what to say about the record beyond that. The doors were still closed.

I don't know if Sudaka or any of its song titles can be translated to mean fortress, but that's what this record was today.

I was sitting in my cube at work when I was assaulted by the all too frequent shouting of a co-worker. I have a strong sense of space and privacy. My co-worker – we'll call him Glenn – does not. He's an intense guy with a real problem controlling his frustration and rage. Those of us who share this room often comment on "the weather" in Glenn's corner cube. I suppose there is an advantage to knowing he's in a particularly foul mood but it's uncomfortable to be the captive audience to one end of a fierce confrontation several times a day, several times per week.

I woke up this morning in such a good mood; a real rarity for me. I was looking forward to getting to work at an earlier start time than usual. I looked forward to an out of the way trip to Starbucks for a rare cup of coffee to start the day. Within moments of logging in and checking my work e-mails, my peaceful morning was disrupted by Glenn shouting at his wife about her inability to operate a tractor.

I'm usually pretty good at coping with this because it is by no means rare. Sometimes I find humor in the preposterous volume and over-the-top harshness. Today it was upsetting. It made my head hurt and my stomach sink. I needed something stronger than cube walls in an open room to shield me from the overheated verbal blasts and I wasn't ready to crank heavy metal into my ears.