Music

I love driving around in my car listening to radio stations that play a little variety from "80's, 90's, and Today" and catching that one song that brings you back to a time when things were a little less real...and a lot more fun.

I was driving to my dentist's office today and had two such moments. The first was Amy Grant's pre-gospel, "Baby, Baby." Suddenly I was eight, spending my summer in New Jersey, playing in the pool at some obscure relative's house during a family reunion. The second moment happened two songs later with "Champagne Supernova." Now I'm thinking about polyester, shiny shirts and Dr. Martin's, hanging out in my friend's dad's basement playing Lode Runner and chatting on compu-serve. (Back in the days when you had to wait after 9:00 p.m. to use the Internet because the minute by minute cost would put your phone bill off the chart!)

Music in general, in my opinion, is the best way to reminisce. One hit of Alanis Morrisette and I am back to hanging out in a friend's kitchen swearing that it is Jagged Little Pill, not Jagged Little Pig while munching on blue frosting straight from the can. While a shot of K's Choice brings me to my sophomore year, driving up to Bozeman to party with my older sister in the blue/green cavalier.

In college I had to complete a final project in which we were to create a presentation, paper, or really anything creative to explain how music played a role in our lives. I wrote some cock and bull paper, quoting (legally of course) any piece of literature I could find that used music to define an occurrence and put it to a life event that had "happened" - hey, I lead a rather uneventful life - and helped shape who I had become up to that point. It's humorous now that there is no deadline and nearly 5 years have passed that I understand that really music didn't define me, but it certainly laid the soundtrack to one good story.