I know it wasn’t a date, but I still swooned when I found your playlist in inide lo-fi typewritten letters, wrapped with chemistry notes. It only makes sense that a collection of songs be my new standard for a first impression on any romantic endeavours.
This became my battle cry. The BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM of the toms that compel my body to heave when I’m pretending to sing those harmonies to an empty sky.
I can trace moments of my past through your music; summer days spent with a Girlfriend’s Dog, a hopeless infatuation with auf der Maur’s Celebrity Skin, tinny speakers blasting Porno Mouth in the room where I lost my virginity on a soft single bed that seemed a huge canvas to our naked bodies. Maybe that’s why you already understood so much of me. It’s like we’re different landscapes represented using the same cartography.
And yet we we’re so similar, and when I realized this, it meant I liked myself too. You were the reaffirmation that I should be happy with the person I’ve become. I have to wonder though: how’d you get there? Did you hate yourself the way I did, and you suffer and struggle like me, or have you always been where I’ve been trying to get my whole life?
And if your Nina Simone is my Leonard Cohen, and my Andrew Vincent is your Andrew Vincent, what else do we share?
I thought I’d never hear music the same way again. I’d always be listening for the both of us, and my discoveries would forever be your discoveries too. So did you mean it when you said I’d linked myself emotionally to all your favourite songs, or have you forgotten me already? I still wonder where you’ve gone when Green Eyes comes on. I told you I need more people like you in my life, and I still do.
Hope the music is loud, and you’re wearing out the soles in your dancing shoes somewhere.
I love this post Jeff because I gave Mark a playlist at the very beginning of our relationship. It was my way of portraying a huge part of me emotionally without going into too many details and the way you described your experience is how I expected his experience to be. What’s funny is that my playlist came up in conversation recently and I discovered that he never really listened to it! While I love him tons it just proved that to people like us a playlist can be magical and to others a playlist can be.…… a playlist.
It makes me so glad to know I’m not the only one who feels this way about their music. That’s why I asked to trade mixtapes with this person; soon after we started talking, I discovered she has a strong emotional connection between her memories and her songs.
She was trepidatious about the idea at first cause she thought I’d judge her on it, music being such a personal issue. But to me, it wasn’t so much about enjoying the songs as it was about getting to know someone in less conventional way. The music being awesome was a complete bonus.
I’d be interested in hearing your playlist some day! I wonder if we’d have any songs in common.
This is an awesome post and an awesome idea Jeff!
Last time I checked you were single. If you still are, that means you’re going to steal the heart of the next guy with a mixtape, and I’m going to get all the credit. :)
Yep, that’s a great idea. BTW, I think your handwriting has evolved over the years to carry a sense of security and confidence.
That’s not my handwriting! Though I wish it was, mine has degraded over many years of pure keyboard use. I suspect most generations are going this way now.
Go her!
My list would sound corny, because dance musics sounds pretty shallow without actually dancing to them :( I mean, who connects to Frank Sinatra’s dancing in the rain nowadays or Waltz #2.
Oh man, Waltz #2 is like an anthem to so many of our generation. Not because it’s a dancing song, but because it’s an emotionally important to them cause Elliot Smith was a symbol for teen angst everywhere. Frank Sinatra, on the other hand, I think most would find strange to be on a mixtape.
I thought I’d use this post to step out of the dark shadows to reveal myself as a long-time reader of your blog. I think it’s a compliment when I say that your blog is the only survivor (and I do mean that) of my ‘RSS Valentine’s Day Massacre’ last year.
It still remains the only blog I read regularly!
I’ve stayed in the dark recesses, but as the resident music nut — one that is probably considerably older than anyone else around here — I sincerely object to your statement, that finding Frank Sinatra on a mixtape could possibly be “strange” (although I do get your point).
I’m not the greatest Sinatra fan by a long shot, but a potential romantic liaison that is into Sinatra is one I would not immediately dismiss.
Hell, someone who is dear to my hear is into medieval recorder music, something I thought I hated … and apparently don’t. ;) That person is younger than you or I could ever hope to be.
P.S.: I think we might know each other from the old 9rules days, although my memory is a bit foggy in that regard.
To take this off-topic for one second (do delete if it disturbs), how did you integrate the Twitter feed into your blog stream? is that a plugin or a custom job?
Thanks for de-lurking, it’s always interesting to find out who’s reading. :)
I think you’ve misunderstood my comment, but I don’t blame you cause it wasn’t that clear. I was referring to Sinatra also being somewhat strange for our generation (30-somethings) since he’s so beyond our time, and I’d say the same thing about Nina Simone or Leonard Cohen, which seem to be our favourite artists.
That’s why I’m never one to dismiss or judge anyone based on their taste in music, and it’s certainly not something that would automatically discount someone’s attractiveness (with a few rare exceptions to that rule).
Also check your e‑mail, I just sent you the trick I use to get Tweets integrated in the WordPress loop.
Might want to point me to some reading material regarding the teenage angst and elliot smith’s waltz #2. I just landed around that age and therefore that was missed in the pursuit of learning French.
Just to add, that our connections and reasons for the connections to the songs are so different.
There’s a really good interview here with the director who made a biography on Smith, and I haven’t seen the film yet but I bet it’d give you a really good idea of the kind of effect he had on people. He came out of the post-grunge era after Nirvana was considered the voice of Generation X and became the indie voice for the next. Also, there’s a fantastic album and review you should check out that may help you understand what other people hear when they listen to his music.
It’s surprises me just as much to realize how differently we hear the same songs. I mean, I can’t imagine how someone could hear Waltz #2 and feel like dancing cause it’s so sad, and yet for you it’s the complete opposite.
There’s sadness in it. That I can hear, but I don’t listen to the lyrics when dancing. There’s also something else. Joyful sadness is what I’d call it. Personally, I hated waltzs that are purely happy because they represented the old era of waltz; a porcelain world of classical higher echelon society, so steril. I can only express waltz fully, when the song conveys sadness, because that’s my experience and story while dancing waltz with the people I used to enjoy dancing it with.
I always find it funny when we seem to discover and like the same music at one point in our life, when our reasons are completely different.
I can only add that to one who plays music and lives and breathes it as I did when I was young, my music was a religious offering to everyone I played for. And it’s really that feeling that has kept me silent lately. It waits for the appreciation it deserves now. It’s been a long time since I had one to really share that with.
There’s only one thing better than giving the music of others to each other: it’s making it anew with someone, forming it, editing it, falling in love with it, and singing it out before others; and that is a memory I cherish. There’s nothing better than sharing that on earth. (With the possible exception of creating some object that gets onstage in a huge performance, that’s amazing too… but music was first.)
Make some for us!