My friend Duff wrote herself in three songs, based on this post, and I love the idea of this challenge.
Apparently I'm in the mood for culling down to the essential today. I've pared my closet to 33 items (not including handknits — I TRIED! I really did. But I couldn't do it) and now I'm paring down to three songs.
I've realized lately that both my jobs are completely language focussed. The writing job is obviously so, but so is the dispatch job — at 911 you can't miss a single word of an address or a symptom or what the captain says on the radio or the word knife. But when it comes to music, I'm kind of wordless. I can listen to songs for decades and be able to sing along phonetically (and even tell you the words that way, if you ask me) but I'll have no idea what the song literally means.
It's about the feeling. It's about what the sound makes rise in me like sap. (Like sappy sap, mostly.)
Murder in the City – Avett Brothers. Oh, Avetts, you tools. I do wish you weren't such tools. But I still love your music. And I take it back about the words and not listening to them, for this song. These words mean something. They mean a lot to me. Oh, my god, just listening to this again broke me down to tears. Love. Family. Friends. Gah.
Stella Maris – Moby. This song to me, is every feeling of grief and longing there ever was. This is what I put on repeat when Robin died in Pack Up the Moon (not a spoiler, his death happens before the book opens). This is what I listen to when I want to cry. Or when I want to need.
Give it Up – Marvin Gaye. Now stop those tears, my friend, and dance. This is my theme song. If this comes on while I'm in the middle of the frozen food section of the grocery store, I will grab the stock boy and spin him around a few times. If this comes on in the DMV (oh, that it would), I will lead those waiting in a feel-good dance party. I can even karaoke it. No lie.
How about you? How do you describe yourself in three songs?
Flow Gently Sweet Afton There is a cover by Nickle Creak. That one is well, kinda of self explanatory.
Reminiscing by Little River Band. For the time and the person he was then.
Wear Purple For Me by Gogol Bordello. They are crazy as a bag of snakes and I definitely think that song is “my” theme song,
Excuse me, I must return to knitting that purple Henley sweater.
Damn, that’s really a challenge, isn’t it? I’ll have to give it some thought and get back, 🙂
I realized mine are probably aspirational:
1. Change – Fishbone
“Deep inside our hearts
There’s a love
You can feel it
It’s a love that assures
We can cry out for a change”
2. Someone Like you – Van Morrison
(my first dance with my husband)
I’ve been travelin’ a hard road
Lookin’ for someone exactly like you
I’ve been carryin’ my heavy load
Waiting for the light to come shining through.
Someone like you makes it all worth while
Someone like you keeps me satisfied.
Someone exactly like you
3. Orange Moon – Erykah Badu
(because of my son)
I’m an orange moon
I’m brighter than before
Brighter than ever before
I’m an orange moon and I shine so bright
’cause I reflect the light of my son
I praise the day, he turned my way
And smiled at me
He gets to smile and I get to be orange, that I love to be
Really? 3 songs? Do you know how many tribillions squared (that’s a trillion times a billion then squared) there are out there? From the time the first musician saved their internal muzak loop for all time?
Can’t. WON’T. (Cue flash video of two year old me pouting and stamping foot)
Music is the muse of emotions. Each time we experience an emotion even though we have experienced that emotion before, it is new each time we experience it.
How many variations of joy are out there that we haven’t experienced yet because we haven’t heard it’s song?
Music is like yarn. If forced to choose only 3, the balance of the Universe is lost and Earth as we know it will become an origami envelope of angst and lost discovery adrift amongst atoms. Yes, this is a serious matter. (This is why we hoard, ahem, stash yarn. Lest mayhem ensues.)
This also explains why handknits cannot be culled.
Balance, baby. Don’t rock the planet.
Peace out. xox.
Oh, mine would be changing all the time! The ones that got me through the last year best, though, are:
Sand in my shoes – Dido
The Storm – The Airborne Toxic Event
The Dog Days are Over – Florence and the Machine
It was a pretty intense time of figuring out the problem was, finding the way forward, and celebrating it. We’ll see what next year’s songs need to be 🙂
I love this assignment and have a bunch of other people doing it too. I expect my list will change from time to time but it’s a fun exercise.