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Three Distinct Music/Memory Associations that I Find Myself Thinking About at Depth Randomly For Unknown Reasons:
+ Summer 2003. Pete Yorn. Although Pete Yorn's first album, musicforthemorningafter is a consistently better album that I listened to throughout high school approximately as much as I listened to The Bends or Recovering the Satellites (i.e., a lot), his second album was what I listened to the summer after my freshman year of college, when I returned to Pennsylvania for the summer. I didn't do much this summer - I worked full time as a one hour photo girl at CVS, I thought a lot about a boy who probably wasn't really worth all of that thought, I didn't go out much - but this summer stands out as somehow monumental. I feel like I could write a lot of essays about it. And the part that seemed so monumental in hindsight was learning how to drive stick shift and taking long, random drives in my dad's falling apart, passed-down-through-my-brother-and-sister black Sentra, and Pete Yorn was what I listened to when I was in it. The first minute-long intro track ends with the lyric, "I could've been somebody else but now I'm me this time," and then it launches into the title track, "Come Back Home," which I of course found wildly, ridiculously relative. The one moment that I pinpoint when I hear this song now, or "Crystal Village," is a particularly long drive, when I ventured into northern Wayne County. I had no idea where I was. I have no idea where I was, now, or how I found my way home again. But I remember feeling like I was at a higher elevation than normal, that there were lots of green hills and fields. In the city, when I begin to miss driving, when I long for open horizons and a steering wheel, this is the album that is always automatically playing on the stereo in my mind.
+ Summer 2004. Modest Mouse. In truth I couldn't pass for a true Modest Mouse fan; I only have two of their albums and the only one I really know well, that I listened to so much this summer, is Good News for People Who Love Bad News. And to true Modest Mouse fans, this is their album that they kind of "sold out" with - their first ever real commercial radio hit; songs being played on the OC. Regardless. It's a good album. The last few tracks especially. And whenever I listen to it now, I picture myself sitting in the Symphony T stop, waiting to go to work, before I gave up the T entirely and just walked to Kenmore Square. They've fixed up Symphony, recently, but this was back when it was still one of the eeriest T stops around. The E line in general is somewhat eerie, somewhat neglected, and Symphony was one of those stops where you just paid on the train, where there were never any T workers around in the actual station, and it always just seemed so quiet. There weren't enough lights; there always seemed to be water dripping; there were so many damn steps back up to Mass Ave. I was on my way to a job I hated, where my boss was one of those late-twenties-thirty-something Boston guys, that seem forever like they are part of some Boston University fraternity, minus the constant drunkenness but retaining the superior leer, who never looked at me in my interview and hired me solely based on my availability, where my supervisor was this shockingly white trash woman and I don't normally use that term but I just have to in this case, and she and my female co-workers would read people and talk about their boyfriends and it made me feel like I back in middle school, and it was horrible, but sometimes when there wasn't anything to do I could read books. So. I listened to a lot of Modest Mouse.
+ Summer 2006. Sufjan Stevens. The summer when we lived on top of the world. When we went to the beach a lot and owned the C line, where half of us would work together all day and then hang out together all night. My friends and I were listening to so much Come on Feel the Illinoise! that I honestly believed everybody else in the country must've been overwhelmed with it too, and when I visited Lou in New York at the beginning of the summer and he hadn't heard of it I almost literally didn't believe him, especially since he is usually Up on the music that I am Up on, but by the time I visited him at the end of the summer he owned it on vinyl. I remember Zoe telling me about a time when they all just laid around in her and Meredith's basement apartment - I think it was her and Steve and Andy - and just listened to it. I wasn't there. But when I hear it, this is what I remember.
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People, places, & things that know me the best:
Kathy. My cat. Co-workers. The T. Both Sams. Brighton. Allie. Downtown Crossing & Faneuil Hall. Many, many people who live on the opposite side of the country. Healthworks Gym. The commuter rail. TiVo.
Things that are good:
UNC basketball starting again. New issues of National Geographic. Tea. Being able to pay my rent, if barely. Grist. Knowing that I have some photographs hanging on a wall somewhere in Boston, that isn't a wall owned by a friend or family member. Thanksgiving. Being home.
+ Summer 2003. Pete Yorn. Although Pete Yorn's first album, musicforthemorningafter is a consistently better album that I listened to throughout high school approximately as much as I listened to The Bends or Recovering the Satellites (i.e., a lot), his second album was what I listened to the summer after my freshman year of college, when I returned to Pennsylvania for the summer. I didn't do much this summer - I worked full time as a one hour photo girl at CVS, I thought a lot about a boy who probably wasn't really worth all of that thought, I didn't go out much - but this summer stands out as somehow monumental. I feel like I could write a lot of essays about it. And the part that seemed so monumental in hindsight was learning how to drive stick shift and taking long, random drives in my dad's falling apart, passed-down-through-my-brother-and-sister black Sentra, and Pete Yorn was what I listened to when I was in it. The first minute-long intro track ends with the lyric, "I could've been somebody else but now I'm me this time," and then it launches into the title track, "Come Back Home," which I of course found wildly, ridiculously relative. The one moment that I pinpoint when I hear this song now, or "Crystal Village," is a particularly long drive, when I ventured into northern Wayne County. I had no idea where I was. I have no idea where I was, now, or how I found my way home again. But I remember feeling like I was at a higher elevation than normal, that there were lots of green hills and fields. In the city, when I begin to miss driving, when I long for open horizons and a steering wheel, this is the album that is always automatically playing on the stereo in my mind.
+ Summer 2004. Modest Mouse. In truth I couldn't pass for a true Modest Mouse fan; I only have two of their albums and the only one I really know well, that I listened to so much this summer, is Good News for People Who Love Bad News. And to true Modest Mouse fans, this is their album that they kind of "sold out" with - their first ever real commercial radio hit; songs being played on the OC. Regardless. It's a good album. The last few tracks especially. And whenever I listen to it now, I picture myself sitting in the Symphony T stop, waiting to go to work, before I gave up the T entirely and just walked to Kenmore Square. They've fixed up Symphony, recently, but this was back when it was still one of the eeriest T stops around. The E line in general is somewhat eerie, somewhat neglected, and Symphony was one of those stops where you just paid on the train, where there were never any T workers around in the actual station, and it always just seemed so quiet. There weren't enough lights; there always seemed to be water dripping; there were so many damn steps back up to Mass Ave. I was on my way to a job I hated, where my boss was one of those late-twenties-thirty-something Boston guys, that seem forever like they are part of some Boston University fraternity, minus the constant drunkenness but retaining the superior leer, who never looked at me in my interview and hired me solely based on my availability, where my supervisor was this shockingly white trash woman and I don't normally use that term but I just have to in this case, and she and my female co-workers would read people and talk about their boyfriends and it made me feel like I back in middle school, and it was horrible, but sometimes when there wasn't anything to do I could read books. So. I listened to a lot of Modest Mouse.
+ Summer 2006. Sufjan Stevens. The summer when we lived on top of the world. When we went to the beach a lot and owned the C line, where half of us would work together all day and then hang out together all night. My friends and I were listening to so much Come on Feel the Illinoise! that I honestly believed everybody else in the country must've been overwhelmed with it too, and when I visited Lou in New York at the beginning of the summer and he hadn't heard of it I almost literally didn't believe him, especially since he is usually Up on the music that I am Up on, but by the time I visited him at the end of the summer he owned it on vinyl. I remember Zoe telling me about a time when they all just laid around in her and Meredith's basement apartment - I think it was her and Steve and Andy - and just listened to it. I wasn't there. But when I hear it, this is what I remember.
-
People, places, & things that know me the best:
Kathy. My cat. Co-workers. The T. Both Sams. Brighton. Allie. Downtown Crossing & Faneuil Hall. Many, many people who live on the opposite side of the country. Healthworks Gym. The commuter rail. TiVo.
Things that are good:
UNC basketball starting again. New issues of National Geographic. Tea. Being able to pay my rent, if barely. Grist. Knowing that I have some photographs hanging on a wall somewhere in Boston, that isn't a wall owned by a friend or family member. Thanksgiving. Being home.