Rockin' out...

I had the chance to be in the car by myself this weekend. This just doesn’t happen very often. I love being in the car by myself. I really do. Not just because I don’t have to listen to anyone arguing. Not just because it means the car stays clean for just a *little* longer. Not just because I can think without hearing someone say, ‘Mom? Mom? Mom?’ over and over again. ;)

The main reason that I love being in the car by myself is because I like to listen to loud music. I’m talking ear-splitting decibels. I’m talking head-throbbing, crazy loud music. Not many people know this about me because it’s only when I’m in the car completely alone that I crank it up and sing along at the top of my lungs. I’m sure I make quite the picture on IH-35.

So in the car this weekend, I had the music cranked up, and I was thinking about how different music marks different ‘eras’ in my life. There are just certain songs that instantly transport me to another place and time in my life. I can’t hear an Alanis Morrisette or NIN song without thinking about my mid twenties, after I had graduated from college. I had my own apartment, without a roommate for the first time in my life, and had started teaching middle school. I can remember cranking the music in my car on the drive home from this exhausting, stressful job that I loved wholeheartedly.

It is amazing to me how music has the power to elicit images and even feelings from years and experiences past. Some of the other songs that instantly give me a mental image:

Chicago’s “Hard Habit to Break”… junior high dances. Actually just about anything by Chicago or Journey takes me back to junior high and the dances in the school cafeteria. The crushes, the heartbreak, the dirty socks… ahhh… the memories! Didn’t you know that ‘you’re the meaning in my life? You’re the inspiration.”

The Eagles… “Hotel California”. I can remember being in the big, creaky bus we had chartered for our high school senior trip to Florida. We played this song over… and over… and over… Almost twenty years later, it still conjures up images, not of sunny California, but of the vast curtain of pine trees on either side of Interstate 10.

Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places”… freshman year in college, dancing at Dessau Hall. Everything about the fun and excitement of my first year in college is resurrected when I hear this song. I know it word for word, and have sung it a hundred times in bars and at parties. (along with ‘You never even called me by my name’ by David Allen Coe and ‘Sweet Caroline’ by Neil Diamond… 'so good! so good!')

Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’… Phil and I danced to this song on our first ‘official’ date. I can still picture the Christmas trees with the (pilfered) white lights, and the white balloons floating across the floor. We danced together, not realizing then that we’d dance to that song at our wedding, years later. (yes, I know… kind of an unorthodox song! It wasn’t our first dance at our wedding, if that makes any difference.)

‘These are Days’ by 10,000 Maniacs… this song instantly makes me think about all the planning Phil and I did in the months leading up to our wedding. I never get tired of hearing that song. :)

It makes me wonder what songs will be the ones I remember from this period in my life, when I look back on it. Will any songs have the power to bring me back to this particular time? In the future when I hear, Matt Nathanson’s ‘Come On Get Higher’ or Jack Johson’s ‘If I Had Eyes’, will I remember the crazy November I spent writing a novel, listening to them on ‘repeat’?

Which songs will I be able to trace back to the life I’m living right now? Makes me curious. Makes me grateful for technology like my iPod, where I can access any of these songs at any point. Makes me glad that I occasionally get to be in the car by myself to listen to the soundtrack of my life. With the volume on high.