i let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, i feel free now

yes, the titles to all my posts are semi-applicable song lyrics. and sometimes, just lyrics to songs i'm listening to coincidentally while writing that post. i think in the grand scheme of life, it's probably the song i'm supposed to hear at the time.

on that note (no pun intended?), allow me some trumpet-sounding of the obvious: i've added a song to my blog. this is big. i'm very "text only." but i found this song trolling around imeem and i just felt like it was the sound this journey is making right now. ironically enough, it has no lyrics. but it's got a lot of heart and a deep well of optimism and plenty of wide-eyed wonder to it. i want to not groan while saying this, but i feel like, well, maybe so do i, and maybe i'm a little speechless about the journey myself. i can talk around it, i can tangent off of it, but i can't actually describe it. i think this song really describes it.

this weekend, jay and i went to jersey to see my folks, and on the train home tonight, i was thinking about the number of songs that have been, and will always be, the soundtrack to a period of my life.

for example:

bloc party in general always makes me think of junior year of college, before i went away to australia. i remember those few months as being kind of fantastic, though i think i've forgotten much of the anxiety of that period of time, which, i should mention, had nothing to do with leaving for oz the following february. but every time "this modern love" comes up in the shuffle on my ipod, i have this flashbulb of walking home to my little on-campus apartment i shared with jay, probably to have leftover pad thai for lunch and watch "starting over."

both deidre and the duet album of lisa gerrard and pieter bourke, "duality" (i know, terribly obscure, that's what the imeem link is for) remind me of two separate trips to canada with david. we listened to "duality" on repeat simply because we forgot to change it when we went to toronto for new year's of '06. i think we forgot to change it because we were having an entirely perfect time together. and the deirdre album was during our trip to montreal and quebec city about five or six months later. that trip was not as entirely perfect, and it's only recently i haven't skipped all of her songs as soon as they came up on shuffle.

there's this sort of crazy-beautiful version of "que sera sera" by pink martini that reminds me of riding the train into manhattan from astoria in july, when i first moved to new york. i used to stare out the window (as the train was elevated with a view of developing long island city) and imagined it as the score to some strange little movie about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. who do you think played the woman? this girl!

eisley reminds me of my first boyfriend, and the camping trip we took, replete with his first attempt to fully take my virginity. he failed, but a week later, he finally snatched it away. the frou frou album "details" was playing on his stereo. alas, alas, imogen heap's voice will always be what heralded in my loss of innocence. eisley was fitting for the pre-loss of innocence period, though.

in melbourne, i bought a cd off a guy on the street who played the dulcimer, and the first track always brings me back into the kitchen of the flat of someone i dated there, and probably not long after had a terribly dramatic falling-out with. sometimes i skip that track too.

"so unsexy" by alanis morissette will always be a sort of staple song for me, and will always bring me back to my dorm room in sophomore year, and the lyric that finally broke me, and how i stood there, half dressed after a shower, doubled over crying, finally.

always, as soon as i reach the chorus of "breaking up" by rilo kiley, i'm back on that liberating walk up 8th avenue one strange night i'm not going to tell you about.


it seems the most salient songs are the ones that bring me back to dramatic moments, not necessarily sad ones, but not exuberantly happy. i think it's one thing to call out the songs that made you happy, the ones that filled you with joy or reaffirmed something beautiful about the world, but what's so much more affecting are the songs that, to take another lyric from today's title's song, recognize the pain in you. it's not, "oh, wow, someone gets it." it's just...y'know, i found the soundtrack to my journey. to this journey. to this far-reaching, world-crossing, soul-stirring journey. it was a genuine pleasure to find this song. but this is obviously one of many journeys, and one that stands out far more than so many of the others, because it outshines them. it is a beacon in the horizon, a lighthouse on a welcomed shore.

but when you're all out at sea, and you don't know what direction you're going in, and everything's either pitch black or shrouded in fog, despite the fact that you can't see where you should go or what you should do you can at least hear someone saying, "you're lost." that in and of itself is reassurance enough sometimes. that's just enough light, maybe not to point you in the right direction, but at least a hint that the right direction will eventually start to shine through, and you'll be sailing towards home in no time.