The Song: "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield

The Event: L.A. Trip

Kismet is an odd thing.  Coincidences or unconscious actions - however you want to define it - can lead to creating profound associations that last well beyond the events that spawned them.  And sometimes the associations are either unbidden or unwelcome - but they persist and insist on their own existence.  Such is my relationship with Natasha Bedingfield's hit song "Unwritten."  It's a simple little pop anthem encouraging people to seize the day and all that other "live for the moment" crap.  Ordinarily I would tune it out like so many songs from American Idol "winners" or that song about Delilah or whatever.  But due to the associations I've formed with the song, I linger a bit longer on the radio station while it plays.  Or I don't roll my eyes immediately as it's the background song for some soft-focused television commercial.  Instead I think about Los Angeles and my ex-girlfriend.

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Song: "Girls" by The Beastie Boys

Event: Childhood vacation/Faulty Memories

I have both a great memory and a terrible memory.  I can recall lines of dialogue, useless facts and other tidbits of trivia with ease.  I tend to remember the placement of items, the speeches of others and other outward displays of behavior.

What I can't do is remember dates well.  Or ages well, either.  I don't mean the difference between the Jurassic and cretaceous period.  I mean, I can never acutely recall how old I was when I experienced something.  I have vague understandings of when it occurred - and I can usually trace the event back to whatever grade I was in at the time.  But it's hard for me to definitively say I was X years old when Y occurred.

This may cause some uneasiness for readers of this feature - a feature that deals exclusively with my memories.

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Song: "True Love Waits" by Radiohead

Event: College.  Yes, ALL of college.

"True Love Waits" was the perennial b-side for Radiohead fans.  Performed live for many years, the achingly depressing song of a misspent existence wouldn't be officially released until the I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings EP in 2001.  (Yes, nerds - it was available on various bonus discs in various other countries, but you know the point I'm trying to make)  The song tends to be performed acoustically (as above) and is a much more stripped down number without all of the various production trickeries of Jonny Greenwood that Radiohead has employed since 1995's The Bends.

And when I hear the song, besides noting how heartbreakingly sad and perfect it is, I think of days full of naps, marijuana smoke, bullshit conversations and extensive philosophy readings.  In short, I think of college.

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Song: "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers

Event: Misheard lyrics

One of the coolest things about art is its inherent subjectivity.  What something means to you may mean something completely different to me.  That possibility for myriad interpretations opens up any works - allowing it to be as emotionally resonating or coldly apathetic as the audience which witnesses it.  And what makes such interpretation even more malleable is when the audience member is either misinformed or simply perceives something incorrectly.  The piece of art - though that may be a lofty title to attach to it - that most reminds me of the transitory identity of art is The Wallflowers' song, "One Headlight."

To start - I'm not a Wallflowers fan; I don't own any of their music, I don't know any songs outside of this one and their cover of Bowie's "Heroes."  I know that the lead singer is Bob Dylan's son and that they haven't really been around for the past decade or so.  And "One Headlight" doesn't get as much radio play as it once did.  But whenever I do happen upon it on the radio, usually on some "Best of the 80s, 90s and Today" station, I stop scanning the stations, listen to the song with a smile, recalling my incorrect reading of the song.

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Song: "Lightning Crashes" by Live

Event: Live Concert with Girl With Whom I Was Hopelessly In Love

Laying on a ratty blanket that someone had brought from their basement, staring up at the stars in this outdoor concert area while the band played, fairly stoned on shitty high school grade weed, I had very little idea what was going on.  And I couldn't have been happier.

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Song: "A Quick One While He's Away" by The Who

Event: The movie, Rushmore

There's not too many filmmakers out there that can make a scene so iconic that every time you see or hear anything associated with that scene, their film is the first thing that comes to mind.  Scorsese and Tarantino have both proven their effectiveness with marrying pop music to intense scenes so whenever you end up on classic radio and hear "Gimme Shelter" or "Stuck in the Middle" suddenly come on, that scene replays in your mind.  (Although, Mr. Scorsese - please, no more with the "Gimme Shelter."  We get it.  I assure you - we get it)

Wes Anderson is, I suppose, the less violent and more hipster friendly version of this type of filmmaker.  He's been able to marry numbers of great pop songs to beautifully staged and filmed scenes.  Like Tarantino, he seems more interested in the music that stands just on the outside of the popular mainstream - focusing more on the songs in middle of the top ten than the first 3.

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Song: "Last Dance" by Donna Summer

The Event: Working at Country Club for a Summer

For one summer, I worked in the kitchen of a Country Club in my native land of Cape Cod.  Mainly I worked for the catering staff, being a server at different functions.  Their biggest functions that occurred with the most regularity were weddings – handling about two or three every weekend. 

The first one I worked was a bit of a disaster as I was unfamiliar with the giant trays we used and had to smile while hot au jus slalomed off the plates, down the tray and finally settling onto a nice spot on underneath my collar. 

It was a harried night that I was looking forward to being over when my supervisor suddenly perked up.  “Ah, it’s ‘Last Dance’, it’s almost over.”  I had no idea what he was talking about, but he said that at 90% of the weddings he worked, this was the last song. 

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The Song: “Heresy” by Nine Inch Nails

The Event: Christian Youth Gathering in Colorado/I part ways with the church

I was brought up in the church and there was a custom that teens (aged 15-17) in my particular congregation would go out to Colorado during the summer for a weeklong gathering of teens from Congregational churches across the nation.  While I was a fairly religious person, I was by no means completely devout.  I had questions, and swore, and did all other manner of sinful things that proved I wasn’t living “right by the lord” – but at the age of 15, I felt like as long as I wasn’t harming anybody, I was doing OK.  One night, in our little group, a youth minister wanted to talk about how God is represented in music.  He did this by first playing some bland Christian rock song.  I’m sure there are some great Christian rock songs, but this one just hit all of the clichés – lyrics using the words “praise,” “light” and “raise up” a lot.  Not to mention just musically it was incredibly boring.  But people in my group were rocking out to it, clearly familiar with the song and loving it. 

Then, with a smile (and I’ll never forget this moment), he segued into the next song:

“Ok.  So there’s that version of how people talk about God in music.  Then there’s this slightly different version.”

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The Song: "Waste" by Phish

The Event: My Ex-Girlfriend

“Waste” by Phish, from their great album Billy Breathes (which I will defend to the death in a hipster thunderdome of coolness), was “our” song for my relationship with someone I'll call "Rachel."  It’s a sweet little song with the main hook of “come waste your time with me."  What I think is interesting is the many phases my feelings and memories have gone through in regards to how I react when I hear this song. 

While I was dating her, the song was a sweet reminder of how cute we could be and how weird it was to be in love.  After she dumped me and started banging the guy down the hall from me, I was a little less optimistic when listening to the song, and more often than not just skipped it altogether.  For a while, I thought I had ruined one of my favorite love songs - at which point I resolved that I will never have another song with a woman, for fear that I really do like the song and it gets ruined by tainted memories. 

Now, however, as time has passed, when I hear that song, I think about the relationship as a whole, good and bad, and take it all in.  The pleasure of waking up besides her is coupled with the annoying regularity of our bickering towards the end.  The song represents a particular time in my life, but it also reminds me of how time changes our perspective on all things and people.  And that’s one to grow on!

(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. 

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