Songs of My Life

I, like almost everyone else on the planet, have certain songs that take me into very specific places in my past. They're not even all songs that I necessarily like, but as soon as the introductory music starts, I'm taken back. A few examples:

"The Ocean Breathes Salty" by Modest Mouse--This just came on my Pandora station (a modified Hold Steady group). This is the song that I quoted on the title page of Edgar's Ashes. I was exhausted, sitting in the Mac Lab, writing out Matthew's storyline in maroon crayon when this song came on. Modest Mouse didn't usually come on that channel, so I had to tab over and see what was playing. And I loved it. Sure, it's from an album that a lot of people didn't really enjoy, but the line "You waste life, why wouldn't you waste death?" became the dedicatory quote for the play. And hearing it takes me back to those exhausted, middle-of-the-night writing marathons where I was putting that show together. It feels like a burned mouth from too much coffee

Eddie Izzard's Definite Article CD--For a while in the spring of 2007, I fell asleep every night listening to spoken word stuff. It usually was an Eddie Izzard CD, because I enjoyed it but I knew the CD well enough that it wouldn't keep me awake. I did this for a few months until I slung my mp3 player across the room in my sleep and broke it.

"You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morrissette--My senior year in high school (2004-2005), I began listening to this CD non-stop for about two months while I was doing errands around town or driving to-and-from school. Mix that in with my expressive interpretations and the fact that it looked like I was screaming at invisible people in my car when I was driving led to some interesting conversations with people that I knew that had seen me driving. I eventually had to take this CD out because it was making me too angry and it was starting to make men piss me off as a general concept. Needless to say, that wasn't going to work any longer.

"The Pineapple Song" from Cabaret--This song actually has little to do with me, but it does go into that same era when I first got a car in high school and I fully believed that the most important part of driving was what you were listening to. I permanently cured my brother of worrying about driving with reckless drivers because I would veer into oncoming traffic if I didn't like the song tha twas on. Well, I would always sing full-out. And after a few months, he started lightly singing along. Then, I wouldn't sing a certain song or whatever, and I catch him singing. And the moment that I knew that I had infected him, at least a little bit, is when we were driving home from the S-curve in front of The Little Pantry and he asked if we could listen to this song because he thought it was hysterical. Score one for musical theatre.