The Stories In My Head Are Set To Music
Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was the first album I ever truly loved, and I played until I knew every song by heart and could sing the soprano backing vocals, too, to every track, except for those where I'd strain on the high notes.
I still strain on them, but I try anyway, because the album is still among my first loves of music.
I have a very auditory memory; most of my CD collection, sometimes even individual tracks on albums, have their own memory, their own story. The songs I listened to when I was revising for my maths final, the songs I sang the winter I first spent my entire allowance on Sara Paretsky novels, huddled against the radiator, eating chocolate covered ginger spice nuts by the bagful. Songs become connected to stories I've told now, and that's often why I'm so fond of using lyrics at the top, and for the title.
Some of these things carry for years; reunited as I was this week with Anthony Stewart Head's rendition of Joss Whedon's Standing In The Way, I felt the knot in my chest from the times I watched the tape of Once More With Feeling, over and over, until I could sing all the songs.
That strange, melancholy feel of the ending, the shock of Buffy's revelation, I remembered it.
I grew up with music I liked but didn't love, although a thorough exposure to all types of classical music means I have a passing ability to identify era, and a fondness for American composers of the early 20th century. And a weakness for the score of Carmen, but not the vocals.
Musical theatre songs were my first introduction to audibly sung music, and later lead me to one of the very few pure classical albums I own, an Ian Bostridge disc. The closest I come to it now is John Barrowman's Swings Cole Porter. In between, an unlikely addition no one else ever loves in the form of modern classic, two Bond albums.
I had my brief pop period in the early nineties, and then there was Sarah McLachlan. She was like my first own choice, my first real love, my first sense of emotion in music, and no album to date I've revisited as often as Fumbling. Next came Heather Nova, and more high straining notes, and then slowly, Tori Amos, in the form of her track Winter.
Four Amos albums later, and I ditched The Corrs in favour of Aimee Mann, and Titiyo in favour of Dido. Chantal Kreviazuk sits next to Over The Rhine on my shelf; the oddball records.
I flirted with Roxette, fell in love, and they're the most records by one band I own that I never play any more. It's difficult to explain why, except that the story I wrote to those albums became too big to fit inside me, too much to hold, and before I could spiral out of control over something I didn't understand, I stopped writing.
I stopped writing, for three whole years.
During those years, too, I still listened to music. Trisha Yearwood, a love affair begun when introduced to Wrong Side of Memphis by an episode of JAG, an affair still not ended, I learned to re-love in that time. I expanded my country collection with the tacky but much adored Tanya Tucker, and an old record by Emmylou Harris, but the new album I also bought, I never play any more.
And the self-same Joss Whedon? Years before he'd introduced me to Alison Krauss & Union Station. I've loved bluegrass ever since, but never expanded my collection. Trisha Yearwood's Inside Out led me to Rosanne Cash's Rules of Travel, and that's all the country and bluegrass I own. Eclectic, not so much. Safe, maybe. Or just, complete, for now.
In high school, one of only two performances by yours truly was a rendition of Tara MacLean's Holy Tears. A third performance of mine would have been Alanis Morissette's You Learn, but it was slated for the week my mother died, this week ten years ago. I did not perform it, though I'd practiced on it for three months. My greatest musical regret will always be MacLean's label dropping her after two albums; I loved them both. My greatest musical pride will always be Morissette; You Learn features on Jagged Little Pill, an album that was such a wild choice I really needed to fight myself when putting it on my wishlist.
None of this makes sense to outsiders; the role music has played in my life is wild, and varying, and connected in strange, terrifying ways to my upbringing, like a mirror of my emotional buoy.
I like to sing, I do not do it well. I'd like to be able to express myself using music, but I never learned, and I do not think I would do well at it if I did. It's not a regret, but a choice, and I love admiring the talent of others.
Songs are the poetry of others set to music, a rhythmical mnemonic of emotion, to me.
In music, I feel no need to dissect, the way I do in prose, see how it's done, make it better, copy it, absorb it, come back to it to see if it changes. Music is just music, songs absorbing the moment and using it like a bookmark for later in life, when I'll flash back to it, the emotion vivid and bright, flaring in my chest.
For those three years, I played little music.
Something happened in those years, a process begun not yet ended, in which I gave up my voice and maybe myself in order to do what I needed to achieve, for myself, for others, until that religious sacrifice became everything I had to lay at any altar that might take it.
It took the music with it, and when the music returned, so did the writing, or maybe the writing came first, and the music second.
For those first few months, while I relearned my writing voice, my vocabulary, my words, I would be cautious with music, sparsely measuring out the moments I was allowed. I purchased Dido's Life For Rent, and stopped playing it after two turns because I could not focus enough if I didn't.
I love music, and sometimes I wonder if that's because of what it gives me, what it gives back to me, a little blood, a little feeling, a colour of life that I deny myself for yet unnamed, unknown reasons.
Some days I think, I cannot do this any more. More days, I wonder why I do. For me, life hasn't been, for so long, a given, but a choice, one whose choice I ignore more often than not, but still, a conscious choice in continuing it.
And sometimes, there is beauty in life. In prose, in poetry, in music and mnemonics.
I can laugh at it, some days, and wonder if that's happiness; random laughter. Happiness is a negative space, so far, I hope it won't always be. I can do so little now, so much throws me, takes me off whatever path I'm on. And yet, I'm working on completion, on things that I know matter to me, a surety of heart I've never felt before.
Fumbling Towards Ecstacy takes on a different meaning in these later days. But it's still the same it always was, the perfection of vocals, the way the words taste on my tongue. Its gentleness, its sadness, the colours of my childhood. Like the feeling of a too-hot radiator against my skin, hiding in a Chicago mystery.
Elbow's Asleep In The Back is in the mail, on its way to me. That record and I, we're going to forge memories. Depending on how they end, I'm going to play it, or not play it again.
I still strain on them, but I try anyway, because the album is still among my first loves of music.
I have a very auditory memory; most of my CD collection, sometimes even individual tracks on albums, have their own memory, their own story. The songs I listened to when I was revising for my maths final, the songs I sang the winter I first spent my entire allowance on Sara Paretsky novels, huddled against the radiator, eating chocolate covered ginger spice nuts by the bagful. Songs become connected to stories I've told now, and that's often why I'm so fond of using lyrics at the top, and for the title.
Some of these things carry for years; reunited as I was this week with Anthony Stewart Head's rendition of Joss Whedon's Standing In The Way, I felt the knot in my chest from the times I watched the tape of Once More With Feeling, over and over, until I could sing all the songs.
That strange, melancholy feel of the ending, the shock of Buffy's revelation, I remembered it.
I grew up with music I liked but didn't love, although a thorough exposure to all types of classical music means I have a passing ability to identify era, and a fondness for American composers of the early 20th century. And a weakness for the score of Carmen, but not the vocals.
Musical theatre songs were my first introduction to audibly sung music, and later lead me to one of the very few pure classical albums I own, an Ian Bostridge disc. The closest I come to it now is John Barrowman's Swings Cole Porter. In between, an unlikely addition no one else ever loves in the form of modern classic, two Bond albums.
I had my brief pop period in the early nineties, and then there was Sarah McLachlan. She was like my first own choice, my first real love, my first sense of emotion in music, and no album to date I've revisited as often as Fumbling. Next came Heather Nova, and more high straining notes, and then slowly, Tori Amos, in the form of her track Winter.
Four Amos albums later, and I ditched The Corrs in favour of Aimee Mann, and Titiyo in favour of Dido. Chantal Kreviazuk sits next to Over The Rhine on my shelf; the oddball records.
I flirted with Roxette, fell in love, and they're the most records by one band I own that I never play any more. It's difficult to explain why, except that the story I wrote to those albums became too big to fit inside me, too much to hold, and before I could spiral out of control over something I didn't understand, I stopped writing.
I stopped writing, for three whole years.
During those years, too, I still listened to music. Trisha Yearwood, a love affair begun when introduced to Wrong Side of Memphis by an episode of JAG, an affair still not ended, I learned to re-love in that time. I expanded my country collection with the tacky but much adored Tanya Tucker, and an old record by Emmylou Harris, but the new album I also bought, I never play any more.
And the self-same Joss Whedon? Years before he'd introduced me to Alison Krauss & Union Station. I've loved bluegrass ever since, but never expanded my collection. Trisha Yearwood's Inside Out led me to Rosanne Cash's Rules of Travel, and that's all the country and bluegrass I own. Eclectic, not so much. Safe, maybe. Or just, complete, for now.
In high school, one of only two performances by yours truly was a rendition of Tara MacLean's Holy Tears. A third performance of mine would have been Alanis Morissette's You Learn, but it was slated for the week my mother died, this week ten years ago. I did not perform it, though I'd practiced on it for three months. My greatest musical regret will always be MacLean's label dropping her after two albums; I loved them both. My greatest musical pride will always be Morissette; You Learn features on Jagged Little Pill, an album that was such a wild choice I really needed to fight myself when putting it on my wishlist.
None of this makes sense to outsiders; the role music has played in my life is wild, and varying, and connected in strange, terrifying ways to my upbringing, like a mirror of my emotional buoy.
I like to sing, I do not do it well. I'd like to be able to express myself using music, but I never learned, and I do not think I would do well at it if I did. It's not a regret, but a choice, and I love admiring the talent of others.
Songs are the poetry of others set to music, a rhythmical mnemonic of emotion, to me.
In music, I feel no need to dissect, the way I do in prose, see how it's done, make it better, copy it, absorb it, come back to it to see if it changes. Music is just music, songs absorbing the moment and using it like a bookmark for later in life, when I'll flash back to it, the emotion vivid and bright, flaring in my chest.
For those three years, I played little music.
Something happened in those years, a process begun not yet ended, in which I gave up my voice and maybe myself in order to do what I needed to achieve, for myself, for others, until that religious sacrifice became everything I had to lay at any altar that might take it.
It took the music with it, and when the music returned, so did the writing, or maybe the writing came first, and the music second.
For those first few months, while I relearned my writing voice, my vocabulary, my words, I would be cautious with music, sparsely measuring out the moments I was allowed. I purchased Dido's Life For Rent, and stopped playing it after two turns because I could not focus enough if I didn't.
I love music, and sometimes I wonder if that's because of what it gives me, what it gives back to me, a little blood, a little feeling, a colour of life that I deny myself for yet unnamed, unknown reasons.
Some days I think, I cannot do this any more. More days, I wonder why I do. For me, life hasn't been, for so long, a given, but a choice, one whose choice I ignore more often than not, but still, a conscious choice in continuing it.
And sometimes, there is beauty in life. In prose, in poetry, in music and mnemonics.
I can laugh at it, some days, and wonder if that's happiness; random laughter. Happiness is a negative space, so far, I hope it won't always be. I can do so little now, so much throws me, takes me off whatever path I'm on. And yet, I'm working on completion, on things that I know matter to me, a surety of heart I've never felt before.
Fumbling Towards Ecstacy takes on a different meaning in these later days. But it's still the same it always was, the perfection of vocals, the way the words taste on my tongue. Its gentleness, its sadness, the colours of my childhood. Like the feeling of a too-hot radiator against my skin, hiding in a Chicago mystery.
Elbow's Asleep In The Back is in the mail, on its way to me. That record and I, we're going to forge memories. Depending on how they end, I'm going to play it, or not play it again.