Music to My Ears

I have a very strange relationship with music: I can't live without it. Literally. When I can't find my iPod, which has been rather a lot lately, I walk around with my laptop open and my iTunes running. I associate memories, experiences, and feelings with music the way some people associate those things with smells. There is only one other thing with which I have such an intimate relationship: the written word. Therefore, I hereby combine the two in an non-poetical ode to six songs that have great meaning to me. A playlist of said songs can be found at the bottom of this blog.

1. Return to Innocence by Enigma

This is my favorite song of all time. The first time I remember hearing this song, as embarrassing as this is to admit, was when I watched a Jonathan Taylor-Thomas movie Man of the House about a young man who intensely dislikes his mother's new boyfriend but bonds with and eventually comes to love this man in his own way through a series of activities in the "Indian Guides," a sort of father-son bonding group in the neighborhood. The beginning of this song, a beautiful Native American chant features at the end of this film. When I hear the beginning it reminds me of two relationships I have. The first is with my biological father: I remember how JTT's character came to love the man who became his stepfather and it reminds me how much I love my own father. The second relationship I think of when I hear this song is the relationship I have with my Heavenly Father. This song has a way of randomly playing when I need it most, and every time I hear it I am reminded that my Heavenly Father loves me. The soothing affects that this song has on me helps me to remember that God is in control. 

Furthermore, this song has a message that I need to hear more perhaps than any other. It encourages me to "return to innocence," to return to how I was when I first heard it as a little girl. "Don't be afraid to be weak/don't be too proud to be strong/just look into your heart and that will be the return to yourself." "Don't care what people say/ just follow your own way/ don't give up and lose the chance/ to return to innocence." This song holds multiple messages for me: messages of repentance, finding and being true to myself, redemption, death, and of course, returning to innocence. 

2. Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve

Three of the songs on this playlist remind me of the same person every time I hear them and are inextricably associated with my high school experience. This is one of those songs. I first heard this song my junior year of high school. The orchestral introduction was played over the loud-speakers as the student body entered and exited the auditorium before and after ever assembly that year. I loved it and accidentally stumbled upon it one late night while browsing for new music. 

When I hear it, I remember what a tough year that was and filing in and out of assemblies. The song deals with the struggle for temporal things we leave behind ("tryin' to make ends meet/ you're a slave to money/ then you die").  Junior year was, for me, a struggle with a lot of temporal things: preparing for and choosing colleges; the reconstructive surgery that changed me emotionally, physically and mentally and the lost connection I felt with God after spending an entire semester completely self-centered. It discusses the bittersweet quality of our lives and reminds me of the bittersweet quality of the relationship with the person of whom this song reminds me. Painfully, its chords bring to memory the time I stood against the back wall of the auditorium for an entire assembly next to this person without ever saying a word and regretting it. Still. 

The song's title reflects my how I feel about it. It's bitter and painful, and yet, it's "sounds recognize the pain in me" and "I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind [and] feel free."

3. Fix You by Coldplay

This is the second song I associate with high school and with that one person. I remember walking out of my first period Health class on my way to second period during what was the worst semester of my life: Now I was actually applying to the colleges I'd chosen my junior year; my future was uncertain and I was recovering from another surgery. After struggling through Health class, the first song I heard on my iPod was this one. The crooning of Chris Martin about "tears streaming down [my] face," and "[loving] someone but it goes to waste," asking"could it be worse" almost put me into tears right there in the hall. But then, the phrase "lights will guide you home/ and ignite your bones/ and I will try to fix you" reminded me of my Savior and how He could fix me. And how someone already had fixed me, by example, the semester before and, though I couldn't have known it then, would fix me the next semester. 

4. Mustang Sally by The Commitments

This is the first song I ever remember hearing. Ever. This is the song to which I sang before I understood that music was made by artists rather than falling out of the sky and wafting through a stereo. Since I was young, my chore has always been to clean the kitchen. And I've always hated it. When I lived on 3rd north in Bountiful, I was often banished to the kitchen after meals to clean the dishes while my family was in the family room laughing as they watched television together. The family learned their lesson about leaving me though, when a cabinet fell on me and pinned my head between  it and the stove while they were in the other room. Often my friends would call and ask me to play, but I wouldn't be allowed out until the dishes were clean; and since I get horribly distracted, it would often take until all the soap bubbles were gone. 

Luckily for me, however, my father had a soft heart and took pity on me many a time. He would come into the kitchen, put on the soundtrack to The Commitments and we would dance around the black-and-white-checkered floor while he sang the male lead and I sang the female backup, using an egg-beater as a microphone. We may not have gotten the kitchen cleaned much faster, but it was certainly much more fun. To this day, I cannot clean the kitchen without music and yes, I sing and dance. The people who live behind us get quite a show.

This song made the 1965 Ford Mustang my favorite car. And, since the other songs on the soundtrack included other soulful and jazzy numbers such as "Chain of Fools," it probably prepared my pipes for the genre, as today my voice sounds much better as a soul sister than a pop princess.  Finally, when I hear a new song, I sometimes evaluate it based on whether or not my husband will be able to sing and dance to it in the kitchen with our daughter. "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs is my current favorite.

5. Suffer Well by Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode, one of my favorite bands, almost had two songs on this list. But I didn't think it would be fair, and I have more of an attachment to this one than any other. Off their Playing the Angel album that came out in the fall of 2005, the songs on this album were described on the jewel case as being "pain and suffering in various tempos," thus, this album fit my personality more or less perfectly, probably more to the more.  This song, written by lead singer Dave Gahan about his extensive drug use, stuck out to me. My life has its share of pains and sufferings in various shapes and sizes or "tempos"  The chorus line of "just hang on/ suffer well" has become my version of "endure to the end."

6. Romeo and Juliet by The Killers

 The #1 played song on my iTunes currently with  114 plays, this  cover of the great song by the Dire Straits is one of which I never tire. I chose this one over the originally because 1/ The Killers is one of my two favorite bands (Depeche Mode is the other), 2/ I prefer the rawer, grittier sound of Brandon Flowers's voice to Mark Knopfler's and 3/ I find Brandon Flowers incredibly attractive and like to visualize him singing this song at my wedding, to me, as the groom. Well, I don't really visualize the wedding part, but I wouldn't object to it if it ever happened. 

My reasons for liking this song so much could provide enough material for a teen angst/romance novel. I like the idea of a guy stepping out of the streetlight and saying "You and me babe/ How 'bout it?" Mostly because I have an obsession with streetlights and lamps of all kinds, but also because what follows is a ballad of love and devotion on the part of this song's Romeo for Juliet. I'm not gonna lie: If the right person told me I'd "exploded in [their] heart" I would find it awkwardly romantic. Romeo says a lot of things sweet and romantic but a little awkward and off, just how I like it. Things like "I dream your dream for you and now your dream is real," and "I can't do a love song the way it's meant to be/ I can't do everything but I'd do anything for you/ I can't do anything except be in love with you." Romeo's devotion for Juliet lightens the heart blackened by the previous "Suffer Well."

Finally, as you may have guessed, this is the third song that reminds me of the person who really had a huge impact on my life, and it wouldn't be but for one line: "It was just that the time was wrong." 

Shakespeare wrote "If music be the food of love, play on./ Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting/ the appetite may sicken, and so die." Music may not fuel my love, but it fuels my life and I imagine that in the day I get too much of it, in the day I grow sick of it, I'll stop living.