(Note: yes this will be a recurring segment that usually will be published on Mondays.  Oops?)

The Song: “The Funeral” by Band of Horses

The Event:  My Grandmother’s death

While it’s very clichéd to relate a song about death to an actual death, at least it’s not a song from The Big Chill.  But more specifically, there was an actual reason to link the song with the event of my grandmother's passing.  When I got the call from my mother that my grandmother had died, I emerged from my bedroom and told my roommate.  As was custom in our tiny New York City apartment, iTunes was playing on random in the background – to cover up the numerous awkward gaps in our conversations.  We were talking about how I’d have to go to New Hampshire for the funeral when this song came on in the background. 

Recent car commercials have attempted to supplant this memory association with different feelings of disgust and confusion over how a song about dying helps sell a car with a moon roof.  But despite all of the best efforts of the (what I’m sure is an excellent) marketing team, every time I happen upon this song I recall that discussion and how oddly appropriate and yet clichéd, too, the song was to randomly come on at that moment.  It’s like my life had a soundtrack for a moment; which would be cool except that it seems my life is an obvious, middle brow television dramedy like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.