Singing the whole way home

I’m having this strange desire to write – not sure what this is all about but for the last two days I have really wanted to write and currently all I write is facebook updates or blogs. We are opting for blogs.
So now that my brain has happily constructed that sentence it is content to sit back and watch me type randomly. Driving home, in the dark, late at night, I was listening/singing with the radio and it really made me sit back and think about music. People say that smells are the things that trigger the fastest memory but I am not really sure. In some ways a smell may make me think of an instant in time – but a song gives me a much more complete memory. Something that a glimpse of a person or the thought of a location. No, a song gives me a memory of what I was doing and more importantly who I was when the song meant so much to me.
For example – the song Collide by Howie Day. The memory that is permanently assigned to that song is driving over the grade into San Luis Obispo for the first time. The words in the song have nothing to do with driving or anything like that, rather it was the song that was playing while I drove over the grade into SLO in the pouring rain. Wow, what a different person I was then. So scare, so unsure of what lay ahead. And yet, there was still the same determined spirit and the curiosity. I had not yet lived on the dairy with Jenn, I had not yet sat in wonder in Bio 161, I had not yet gone back to teach the Supplemental workshop for 161 and been amazed all over again at how the material was presented and how amazing it really all is. But every time I hear that song I can almost see the rain pouring down (it never poured again like that as I drove over the grade) and wondering what college was really going to be like.
Another one – going even farther back – was a song from a soundtrack called “The tide is high”. Yes, it was not the original but a remix, but for me that remix was almost more appropriate. The song talks about how all the girls like the same guy but maybe he will look at her (the singer). At the time I had the worse crush on the same guy I think everyone in by grade had. Like couldn’t even sit next to him and focus bad. How young I felt. Maybe he would notice me? Maybe I have grown cynical from that time but now I figure no one is actually going to notice me much.
Sometime the songs are assigned memories because of when they are played. Sometime they are assigned a memory because of what the words say. Sometimes it is a feeling. I think music is the emotion I feel if you could hear it. It contains all the things I see and feel.
If I had to pin down a song for the fall it would definitely be either “Rhythm of Love” by the Plain White T’s or Sara Bareilles’ song “King of Everything”. Not because they hold a deep meaning to me that applies to this fall but definitely because that is when they have been played and every time they come on I turn the volume up high and sing along. Not because I sound all the fantastic – more because it is just too fun not to. Perhaps I should make this a habit and see where the seasons take me. Oh! Season – Christmas music is just around the corner.