Music
So there's this "Pick Five" app on Facebook, where you title your set (Something like "My 5 Super-Fav Movies"), then enter the five titles, and it publishes a visual composite for everyone to see.
So this got me thinking, and I realized that there are definitively 3 (sadly not 5) albums that have been extraordinarily major parts of my life.
1. Paul Simon's Graceland
This album IS my childhood. It never occurred to me that anyone else would even know about this album, until that day on the hike when I marched through the mud, singing "You Can Call Me Al" and "Boy in the Bubble" with Blake Hamann.
Purely because I've loved it so much and for so long, I can say that this is my most favorite album of all time. When I was locked in the dungeon of the fundamentalist evangelical christian school, I had fantasies of Paul Simon coming to Tazewell to perform (if he wasn't dead; i wasn't too sure -- most people i found amazing had already died by the time i came around). It was like my secret identity -- I learned the popular country music songs from listening to the other little girls, and none of them had any idea about the music that I listened to--the kind of thing you would never hear on the radio.
2. Weekend Excursion
I can't think of the title (it may be self-titled) but if I were an artist I could draw the green cover, including all the signatures of the band members.
When I went through a bizarrely tumultuous emotional period freshman year (Salem), this CD was one of the few I owned, and I listened to it... over and over and over again. God bless my roommate Katie for thinking it was cute when I was singing with my headphones on.
3. Regina Spektor's Begin To Hope
I discovered Regina Spektor right before I fell off the cliff of major depression my sophomore year. She has this stream player on her website that looks like an old tape deck, and there were times when I would just listen to the whole album beginning to end, again and again all night long. I didn't have much of anything to hold on to right then... and I have such clear memories of seeing the sun rise, but being too afraid to face all my failures, so I'd go to sleep just a few hours before class was starting.
Even now, I listen to the first few seconds of "Fidelity", and there's so much complicated emotional memory... I don't know what thought I was doing or thinking then, or how I survived it/myself, but somehow hearing that album reminds me that I'm strong enough to get through anything
So this got me thinking, and I realized that there are definitively 3 (sadly not 5) albums that have been extraordinarily major parts of my life.
1. Paul Simon's Graceland
This album IS my childhood. It never occurred to me that anyone else would even know about this album, until that day on the hike when I marched through the mud, singing "You Can Call Me Al" and "Boy in the Bubble" with Blake Hamann.
Purely because I've loved it so much and for so long, I can say that this is my most favorite album of all time. When I was locked in the dungeon of the fundamentalist evangelical christian school, I had fantasies of Paul Simon coming to Tazewell to perform (if he wasn't dead; i wasn't too sure -- most people i found amazing had already died by the time i came around). It was like my secret identity -- I learned the popular country music songs from listening to the other little girls, and none of them had any idea about the music that I listened to--the kind of thing you would never hear on the radio.
2. Weekend Excursion
I can't think of the title (it may be self-titled) but if I were an artist I could draw the green cover, including all the signatures of the band members.
When I went through a bizarrely tumultuous emotional period freshman year (Salem), this CD was one of the few I owned, and I listened to it... over and over and over again. God bless my roommate Katie for thinking it was cute when I was singing with my headphones on.
3. Regina Spektor's Begin To Hope
I discovered Regina Spektor right before I fell off the cliff of major depression my sophomore year. She has this stream player on her website that looks like an old tape deck, and there were times when I would just listen to the whole album beginning to end, again and again all night long. I didn't have much of anything to hold on to right then... and I have such clear memories of seeing the sun rise, but being too afraid to face all my failures, so I'd go to sleep just a few hours before class was starting.
Even now, I listen to the first few seconds of "Fidelity", and there's so much complicated emotional memory... I don't know what thought I was doing or thinking then, or how I survived it/myself, but somehow hearing that album reminds me that I'm strong enough to get through anything