If You Feel So Inclined....
A Three Part Study in Musical Relations
Preface, or a Brief Explanation of My Neurosis’
I love to write lists. Once you get in the habit of orderly thought, it’s difficult to stop. Each year I leave space on my walls so I can stick the Post-It notes that I write everything on someplace where I won’t forget and lose them. And each year they accumulate, dangling from the white plaster like leaves on a tree drawn by Dr. Seuss, serving as some kind of OCD diary of my life. They flutter beside my desk, reminding me of things done and things that need doing. And once a year, I take them all down and start fresh. Not because of some desire to move on with life and start anew, but because at some point people begin to worry about your mental health when the only thing hanging in your room are sticky notes.
These lists fall into two categories - the practical and the less so. There are notes dictating what chores I need to accomplish, to whom I need to write thank-you notes, what books I need to remember to borrow from the library next time I’m there. These are the practical ones. Then there are the ones that detail lists of people who look like me, records I would like to get on vinyl, and people who harbor feelings of ill will towards me. These are less practical, but equally important.
Part One, The List Begins
I’ve written an impractical list of music that reminds me of people I know. This came about after rediscovering a compilation CD that my best friend gave me before she left for college. There was music on there that had always reminded me of her, but for no discernable reason; I just assumed it was innately Brynn-like. I was disappointed to find that this was not the case, but was nonetheless pleased to have a reason to attribute these songs to her. As I flipped through the tracks, I began to wonder what other music I ascribed to people I knew.
Now, I must note here, that as a general rule, just about all of the music in my library reminds me of someone or something, I think this is the case for everyone. So for the sake of not having to catalog over 2000 songs , I made the decision to narrow the field by creating a list of only one genre of person.
Men.
Or more specifically, men who I had been in love with at some point . This required a list of its own before I could begin my original endeavor. If you have never taken stock of the people you have loved in your life, be prepared for an odd experience. Listing them in general terms is one thing but writing their names next to one another on a page is a different experience entirely. It feels wrong, as though they should not be placed near each other. Chris, Josh, Antonp, Alex; I felt so girlish committing them to paper, like I was playing a game of middle school MASH . But there I had it, the names neatly lined up in a disturbing little row, waiting to be matched with the songs in my collection. They stared back at me, contained on the imaginary white page of a word document, judging me, waiting to be matched with something other than me.
Part B, The Selections and their Meanings
The first name on the list was that of my 7th grade boyfriend, Chris. Usually it’s a 50/50 chance that he will earn a mention when I am forced to detail my romantic ventures to inquiring parties, since what we had could barely be qualified as a real relationship. We held hands, I wore his Pop-Warner football jersey on the Fridays before games, and he wrote me love notes that were then stuffed into my locker - that was the extent of us dating. The only song that came to mind when I thought of him is quite possibly the most detrimental to my musical reputation . It was first song played at my first middle school dance; “Pinch Me” by the Barenaked Ladies. I will never be able to listen to it without being drawn back to the moment when I stood alone at the corner of the mostly empty dance floor, dressed in a new skirt and top, waiting for something. Later that night, I danced in slow circles with a boy for the first time. Chris gingerly put his hands on my waist and I understood just how nice it felt to be close to someone. I’ve been trying to copy that sensation ever since, to varying degrees of success.
The next name to appear belonged to my high school crush, Josh. He was a theater nerd who was a year ahead of me in high school with a scrawny physique, a dry wit, and a full beard by the age of fourteen. For three years I listened to “Do You Realize?” by the Flaming Lips hoping that someday he would realize that we were meant to be more than just friends. Eventually I realized that this was a foolish hope since we had nothing in common. At the time, the song made me think of how self-deprecating he was and how different things would be if only he knew that he had “the most beautiful eyes.” Looking back, the song now reminds me of how simple and blind my love for him was. The repeated lyrics, the stupidly simple lines all added up to paint a picture of a love that came without any deeper emotion. After he graduated, I wrote him confessing the fact that all through school I had harbored these feelings for him. As it turned out, three days before I wrote he started dating someone at college who it now appears he might marry. Almost makes one believe in fate.
Anton came next. Our relationship was probably the most volatile and short lived of them all. We met though circumstance and tried dating one another from opposite sides of the state for two months. It didn’t really pan out, since I didn’t have a car and he didn’t have a license or the motivation to come visit me. The night he dumped me, I listened to “Everything I Try to Do, Nothing Seems to Turn Out Right” by The Decemberists on repeat as my mother drove me home. The entire song seemed to be about me and him. We recklessly madeout in movie theatres and coffee shops around Burlington, then he dumped me that same evening and left me to await my ride outside in a February drizzle like the poor hero of the song. Both my memories of him and the tone of the song are tainted with a hint of sadness and resignation. Colin Meloy plaintively sings in the final line “I guess I always knew it’d end this way.” And really, so did I. No sixteen year old boy with reasonably attractive features will wait around for a bi-weekly date with a girl . We were doomed from the start and some part of me knew it. So, with “a wink and a wave” he hopped in a cab while I watched the taxi lights distantly fade. And just like Mr. Meloy, I always knew it was going to end that way.
Lastly there was Alex. He stands alone as the only real and mature relationship I have had so far. We dated for seven months, three of which were spent with 1600 miles between us. We lived on opposite sides of the East Coast, a distance that as Mr. Ben Gibbard put it “seemed further than ever before.” That summer, I went back to playing favorite albums as a way to distract myself from missing the person I loved. Transatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie retained a semi-permanent place in my stereo and I listened to the singer wail out the words “I need you so much closer” as I counted down the days until I could see Alex again. In the end, I think it was the distance that separated us. Not any physical barrier , but something much bigger than that. Though we seemed to complement one another, it eventually became apparent that our lives were meant to move in different directions. And so everything about the song took on a new meaning. During our time apart, all I wanted was for us to be closer in terms of miles. Yet in our time together what we needed was to be closer in terms of everything else. And though we could have changed for one another, neither of us did. Call it stubbornness, call it habit, or call it staying true to yourself, in the end it meant that we broke up for no reason other than it seeming like the thing to do. And sometimes that’s reason enough.
Part III, Consequences
When the list was done, I played these songs, one after another, and tried to see some sort of connection between them. If there was a thread, it wasn’t one I could find; not in the music, not in the people. These four stand apart in time and in space, with little reason for any one to know any other. The music comes from different artists at different times in different genres and there only two things that I can see binding these men in any fashion. The first being that they’ll all probably be jobless when they get done with school , the second being me.
I initially compiled this list out of curiosity; I wanted to see if the people and music that have influenced me in my life worked together like some sort of cosmic playlist. And maybe they do, but as far as I can see this mix is in serious need of some reworking. There are no bridge songs that tie the big moments together and there’s no flow to keep the mood going. Maybe what I really need to do is not focus on one aspect of my life, but many. Maybe narrowing the list to just men forced me to eliminate some essential tracks, because after all, there’s a lot more to my life than just a handful of guys who thought I was worth their time. I think that’s the trouble with list making sometimes, you get so focused on the obvious items to write down, you can forget that the world isn’t made up of categories and numbered lines.
There are footnotes that go along with this, but I'm too lazy to add them in.