Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Is it an iPod, or is it a time machine?




So, I got back on the exercise routine gingerly last night (insert 'woot' here), and when I walk/run/whatever outside, I almost always have to set it to music. One thing about me and my music: every single second of every song is associated with some sort of memory, person, event, feeling, era-in-my-life...This is both a blessing and a curse. A song comes on, and I find myself mentally and emotionally submerged - almost completely - in whatever was going on in my life at the time I first heard that song. Sometimes this is fantastic, and sometimes it's a little like drowning...it's like having your insides instantly transported to another time and place while your body is still doing laps around the block. 


For instance: when I listen to Waylon Jennings, I'm back in early 2006, when I first started dating my husband (this time around). When I hear Wings, it's 1975 again and I'm a little girl at my grandparents' house, staying up late to watch Hockey Night in Canada with my Aunt Lynne. OR...it's November of 2000, and I'm trying to drive home in a blizzard that made national news. I got 5 city blocks in FIVE HOURS...and the only CD in my truck was Wings: Greatest Hits. Now, I love Wings. But after 5 hours of one CD, even the truck had had enough: the digital readout on the car radio read "HOT" and spit the CD right out.


Jeff Buckley's Grace generally gets skipped on the iPod because it brings me back to a really dark time, one of the few times in my life I really never enjoy revisiting. Belle & Sebastian's Books EP: the most beautiful boyfriend I had, and also the most disappointing. Any song by my friend Michael Oliver and his band Go, Dog. Go! brings me back to one of the happiest times in my life, and it also makes me a little wistful for those days. The Cardigans' First Band on the Moon is a stay in Los Angeles in the mid-90s, whereas their Long Gone Before Daylight record is a fun time and a really sweet boyfriend in the mid-"aughts."


Anyway, you see where I'm going with this. I could literally go on for hours.


I don't really have a point. It's just that I've noticed something while engaging in this whole exercise thing: it's always like hopping into a time machine, Bill & Ted style: with each song change, I'm back in the time traveling phone booth and whisked off to some different era. One lap around our block and I've already visited several places, spanning a number of years. It's almost a workout in itself.


So now let me leave you with Carol Medina's Secret Fantasy, arguably one of the cheesiest songs ever recorded. I mean, listen to it! But...all I think about when I hear it is being 23, 24 years old, going out at night with my then-boyfriend and - gasp! - dancing. Oh, and it also reminds me of when I first "met" one of my many movie boyfriends - this time, it was Jeremy Northam in The Net. ha! How's that for totally fucking random? 


Anyway, oddly enough, 1995 was one of the absolute darkest years in my life, marked by a descent into the hell of eating disorders and all the stuff that comes with that. But Carol Medina, Heart, "the fuckin' Eagles, man"...all the cornball music I listened to back then only brings me back to the good stuff from those days. And there was quite a lot, when I bothered to open my eyes and check it out. I don't know what the deal is with that, or why that music doesn't bother me the way I think it should. All I know is, I'm happy about that, and when this silly shit came on my iPod last night, I had to listen to it twice.

5 comments:

  1. I completely hear you--it's as though I can't separate the music from the happenings. Some music, no matter how great, gets skipped because it's so VISCERAL--it almost pains me to listen.

    I always have to laugh through the cringing when I revisit middle school. *shudder*

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  2. MB - Visceral is EXACTLY the right word for it. I have those "must skip" songs and albums, too.

    I LOVE the middle school stuff. The college and early 90s stuff is where the cringing begins for me :)

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  3. This is why sometimes I listen to classical or jazz that I have absolutely no familiarity with. The absence of emotional baggage is such a relief.

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  4. I totally get that. Even when the memories are good, it gets to be a little much sometimes. The other night, I was listening to Michael Oliver, practicing for a show in July. And although he's one of my dearest friends, I had to stop listening after a while because I was just reliving this whole era of my life and it got kind of exhausting. heh, so weird.

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  5. It gets weirder. There's the Audioslave song, "Doesn't Remind Me," which I guess is about pretty much the same thing. Except sometimes when I listen to random jazz for that very reason, it reminds me of THAT SONG.

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