It's an interesting thought to consider the amount that someone can change the way they are or the inability they have with altering much about what others recognize as their core traits. It would be a damaging and demoralizing thing if everything you said or every facial expression, reaction was recorded and played back for you in the way that NFL quarterbacks get copies of still frames of the video evidence for every mistake or triumph that they have in game action almost simultaneously, before the crowd's roars have even had the chance to dissipate. If we could hear replayed how many times we use certain words or phrases, how many times we curl our lip to the left when we're typing and the words are coming out of the ends of our fingers in surprisingly flowing ways, we'd be appalled and petrified. We'd vow to become more well-rounded, more nuanced and interesting. We'd vow to attain unpredictability, but within hours, we'd be languishing in our same old ruts, shaking our head and wringing our hands, discouraged and useless as an example of positive growth. We give our brains too much credit. We think that they're powerful, but they can't do too much we find out. Maybe what it comes down to is that we give our intentions too much credit. Of course, it's what they do, what they're meant for - they mean well, they just come up short more than they'd ever cop to. Los Angeles, California, band Autolux, gives us a doomsy feeling of reinvention or the lack there up on its last album, "Transit Transit." The characters that pop up throughout are either wrestling with their lot and their composition or they're fingering the composition of others, holding a mirror out to show people what's really there, what they see. There are those who are trying to change and there are those unwilling to do so. Mostly, there are those who are having a tough time seeing through the bullshit what they've been all along. It's not an easy thing to do, to know the real thing inside. You drag your line in the water unsuccessfully enough and you're going to think that the only things out there for catching are the hungry and available weeds that are at the bottom of the lake. It all gets hauled up easily. Lead singer Eugene Goreshter sings on "Turnstile Blues," "Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake the clouds out/Shake, shake the stars down/Shake, shake it down, down/Now you can see yourself." It's one of those revelations that maybe wasn't wanted, but now it's here and there's no going back. It's finding out the dark stuff about yourself - the things that you refuse to face - that make that trunk of the soul some harder wood, something that's going to withstand those straight-line winds and the thunderstorms. It can make for some unpleasant nights and some depressing turns, but it's what lives in the cage.