February 2006
When I was a high school girl obsessed with Pearl Jam, I read an interview Eddie Vedder gave to Spin or Rolling Stone in which he said that he hated the kind of people who regard music as only a soundtrack to their lives. He believed that music is something to be really listened to and felt. I held onto that quote, and applied it to my life. Everything I listened to I loved and treasured. I must still believe this idea to be significant, or else I wouldn't have remembered it for these past eleven years.
So, one recent morning, I woke to find that my stereo and every last one of my cds had been stolen from my car in the night. This gave me pause. I didn't feel violated or angry; I figured it was all a part of the karmic balance of life. It was some kind of sign that my dislike and fear of mp3's were unfounded. It was time to jump on the bandwagon and depend on my computer for my music needs.
In the meantime, my life is now filled with silence. I drive to work every morning without some upbeat songs to start my day off right. While cleaning the kitchen or sewing, there are no 60's girl group jams to keep me company.
Those examples are just inconveniences, though. I'm starting to miss my songs like lost lovers or friends. And I long for the feeling of nostalgia that comes over me when I hear a certain favorite hook or phrase.
Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville' and 'Whipsmart' will always remind me of riding the bus to high school. The bus would come up over this one hill and the sun would suddenly be in my eyes and shining orange & gold across the farms on the horizon
The dark days of winter always seem just right for Fiona's 'When the Pawn'. I had this in my car's cd player for three months straight. The angry lyrics and moody instrumentation mingle so well with road-salt-covered cars and early sunset.
Any Belle & Sebastian record is perfect on breezy, sunny afternoons. They bring me back to the first mix Joe ever made for me. And the time when he learned the chords and I the lyrics for 'String Bean Jean'. We nervously sang/played it from opposite sides of his living room. It almost felt a little bit like we were a band, for a minute.
A happy day just isn't complete unless I can blast Ben Folds Five's 'Whatever and Ever Amen'. I used to race home from singing lessons listening to that album, each song's silliness making me more and more giddy as the moonlight guided me home.
Are my memories less vivid now that their musical accompaniment is gone? I feel as if with that aural component, I was blessed with a kind of bargain bin synesthesia. Now, the movies of my life have no sound.
Two dimensional remembrances might not be all bad, though. I once heard someone say that television is the least imaginative medium of entertainment because the story, picture and sound are all presented to the watcher in one easy pill. Radio (in its heyday and now on programs like ‘This American Life’) is more engaging because the sound is there, but the visual cues are not, forcing the listener to create his own detailed landscape for the tale. And reading is the most involved medium of them all. The reader invents an entire world around the plot, complete with neon backdrops and crashing sound effects.
Maybe the less I have to work with, the better off I am. I can add all the songs back to the film reel of my life, but with more flourishes and crescendos. I’ve got the job of composer and sound editor.
Come to think of it, I’m in the director’s chair, too. Isn’t that what we all do? We keep the bare bones of the special moments in our lives and let our minds fill in each one of the details that we can no longer recall. When you think about that process, don’t our memories seem all the richer for it?
By Anna
So, one recent morning, I woke to find that my stereo and every last one of my cds had been stolen from my car in the night. This gave me pause. I didn't feel violated or angry; I figured it was all a part of the karmic balance of life. It was some kind of sign that my dislike and fear of mp3's were unfounded. It was time to jump on the bandwagon and depend on my computer for my music needs.
In the meantime, my life is now filled with silence. I drive to work every morning without some upbeat songs to start my day off right. While cleaning the kitchen or sewing, there are no 60's girl group jams to keep me company.
Those examples are just inconveniences, though. I'm starting to miss my songs like lost lovers or friends. And I long for the feeling of nostalgia that comes over me when I hear a certain favorite hook or phrase.
Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville' and 'Whipsmart' will always remind me of riding the bus to high school. The bus would come up over this one hill and the sun would suddenly be in my eyes and shining orange & gold across the farms on the horizon
The dark days of winter always seem just right for Fiona's 'When the Pawn'. I had this in my car's cd player for three months straight. The angry lyrics and moody instrumentation mingle so well with road-salt-covered cars and early sunset.
Any Belle & Sebastian record is perfect on breezy, sunny afternoons. They bring me back to the first mix Joe ever made for me. And the time when he learned the chords and I the lyrics for 'String Bean Jean'. We nervously sang/played it from opposite sides of his living room. It almost felt a little bit like we were a band, for a minute.
A happy day just isn't complete unless I can blast Ben Folds Five's 'Whatever and Ever Amen'. I used to race home from singing lessons listening to that album, each song's silliness making me more and more giddy as the moonlight guided me home.
Are my memories less vivid now that their musical accompaniment is gone? I feel as if with that aural component, I was blessed with a kind of bargain bin synesthesia. Now, the movies of my life have no sound.
Two dimensional remembrances might not be all bad, though. I once heard someone say that television is the least imaginative medium of entertainment because the story, picture and sound are all presented to the watcher in one easy pill. Radio (in its heyday and now on programs like ‘This American Life’) is more engaging because the sound is there, but the visual cues are not, forcing the listener to create his own detailed landscape for the tale. And reading is the most involved medium of them all. The reader invents an entire world around the plot, complete with neon backdrops and crashing sound effects.
Maybe the less I have to work with, the better off I am. I can add all the songs back to the film reel of my life, but with more flourishes and crescendos. I’ve got the job of composer and sound editor.
Come to think of it, I’m in the director’s chair, too. Isn’t that what we all do? We keep the bare bones of the special moments in our lives and let our minds fill in each one of the details that we can no longer recall. When you think about that process, don’t our memories seem all the richer for it?
By Anna
posted by Joey at 9:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home