On a Musical Note

I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music. - Albert Einstein

I go through phases in life where I'm more or less attached to music. Sometimes I listen to the radio with general indifference, but then I enter a phase - like now - where I have to have music on every second of every day or the silence is deafening.

I remember when I was little, my dad used to play his guitar sometimes at night. He usually played old country tunes like "Tennessee Waltz" or "Frankie & Johnnie." He was completely self-taught on a guitar he bought at a pawn shop, and I have always wished I'd inherited even a trace of his musical ear. As I got older there was my sister, six years older than me, who shaped my early music tastes with the tapes she'd let me listen to while she was at school - Madonna, Wham! and Michael Jackson.

And when I first got my CD player, I only had 5 CDs that I listened to endlessly including Counting Crows' August & Everything After, Dave Matthews Band's Under the Table & Dreaming and Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. And from there, the collection grew and expanded. Tastes changed. Friends introduced new songs, new bands. And now I've amassed a fair collection of music. Most of which has profound meaning to me, whether in its lyrics or its connection to the past.

I love how some songs are irrevocably tied to moments in my life, and no matter when I hear them, I am transported back to that moment. "Africa" by Toto makes me think of going to the park, eating bologna and cheese sandwiches and listening to WRFC 960 AM in my mom's gray Oldsmobile with the plushy red seats. Other songs simply give me a certain feeling when I hear them - Tori Amos' "Putting the Damage On" can make me cry at the drop of a hat and David Gray's "Twilight" makes me want to go downtown and sit in a dark bar. And then there are songs that I only want to listen to under certain conditions. Like "One" by U2 and "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House are best listened to when it's raining at the change of season and cold like the beginning of winter or spring.

I was telling Kim today that I wanted to make an autumn mix, with songs from This Desert Life (an inherently fallish album) and "As I'm Leaving" by David Gray. And we talked about how the songs that came out our first year of grad school make us think of fall - like "Clint Eastwood" by the Gorillaz and "Start the Commotion" by The Wiseguys. Which led me into thinking about songs that make me think of the grad school years like "Tiny Dancer" and "Sex Machine" - two songs played so relentlessly on the juke box at Cedars, I'm surprised I still like them. And "Teenage Wasteland" - (which Kim & I decided is a spring song) makes both of us feel like we're going somewhere important. Like Krispy Kreme.

I'm fond, too, in my solitude, of thinking, "If my life were a movie, what song would be playing right now?" When Kim was in town, we were all sitting at the bar, and "Here Comes the Sun" started playing and it seemed like the end of the movie when the camera is panning out from the characters and the credits start to roll and you know everything's going to work out just fine.

Ah, music. How you move me.