The Good Ol' Days (?)
When I hear a song on the radio, it may evoke certain memories...good, bad, romantic or downright emotional where I get extremely angry or sad (three years later, I still cannot listen to Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Will" after I listened to it repeatedly during the summer my boyfriend and I had a horrendous break-up). But for the most part, I love listening to music that brings back any memory. I enjoy being transformed to a time in my life that I may not normally think of on a daily basis.
The joy of spending so much time in my car is that I get to listen to a lot of music. I have two large books of CDs plus random CD cases strewn about my car from random trips to Best Buy or Second Spin. The trouble with having the extensive variety of music in my car is that I tend to forget about what I own.
So today when I got to my car after my morning class, I decided it was time to change out the discs in my visor. I stumbled upon an old CD that I bought in high school and was instantly taken back to when I was 16, lying on my bed contemplating life. "Automatic for the People" by REM used to be my listening obsession. Of course, my depressive taste in music only fed my depressive state of mind in high school.
Listening to this CD on the way home from school today, I immediately remembered the clothes I used to wear, my crusty pair of Birkenstocks that never left my feet, and the places I used to drive to on Friday nights with my friend Kate. I remember the feelings I had about certain issues that were important in my life when I had no "real world" problems to worry about, days at my job in a hospital kitchen and the food fights that would ensue when our supervisors weren't looking. I would to listen to this CD while driving the 70 short miles to my friend Emily's house to de-stress over the weekend, and I would listen to this CD with my friend Becky when we were making plans to move to New York City the minute we graduated high school.
Anyone who knows me well, knows that I have the tendancy to push "replay" on any new CD I get. I do this with all my CDs. The minute I open them and put them in my CD player, I have it on repeat for atleast two weeks. If the CD is so wonderful and I haven't gotten sick of it, then it stays in rotation for about three months until I find new music to obsess over. Some of my friends don't understand this weird quirk. Some of them tell me that if I wouldn't keep the same CD on repeat for a month, I wouldn't want to chuck it out the window when I've had my fill. But here's my rationalization; many of us take pictures to remember certain moments in our lives, while others keep a journal (or a blog), but I keep my memories stored in my CDs.
There are times when I put in a CD from my past just to remember how far I've come over the last 10 years of my life. My music has been a constant while the world around me has changed. I have CDs to remember my angry days in high school, my first serious boyfriend, my college days in Milwaukee-living in a house with 12 other people, my two-day moving excursion from Wisconsin to Colorado through a blizzard that shut down the highways. I have CDs to remember the break-up with my first serious boyfriend, the transition in my life from being completely devastated to finding new friends and new joys to think about. I have CDs to remember moving into my own apartment (FINALLY!) and I will have a special new CD to obsess over when I finally graduate college. There will be road trips, exotic vacations, weddings, new relationships and new jobs in my future and for those memories, I can assure you there will be room for more CDs in my car visor.
posted by erin @ 8:25 PM
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