What is it about music that is so visceral, so inherently emotional? Cutting across class, age, gender, music speaks to all of us in its own way.
Whether it is picking music that matches a particular mood, or to evoke one, music has the power to transport us outside of ourselves. In the weeks immediately following September 11th, I was glued to NPR, which played classical music between the news reports. I found the music soothed my ravaged nerves and allowed me to pick myself up and continue living. From that point forward, I began to expand my library of classical music and it has become a staple of my overall music collection.
Equally, when I find myself saddened by life's disappointments, I turn to a few CDs that I put into my player, hit repeat and play over and over until I have purged the negative emotions from my system. These CDs never find themselves in my player when I am in any other emotional state, but they are like oxygen when I need them, as I seem to right this moment.
Then there are the songs that are inextricably tied to life's happier moments; the song that reminds me of a certain time, or person, or place in my life that is uniquely special to me. This song may be similarly meaningful to someone else, for completely different reasons.
In the past, I used to make myself mix tapes where I took songs that meant a lot to me at that moment in time and put them all together on one collection. Coming across it years later, and popping it into the stereo, some of those songs are still evocative and powerful, but others seem to be glaring mistakes in the tapestry of notes weaving themselves out of the speakers. Funny how that happens, isn't it? The song that seemed perfect at the time is nothing more than a chance to fast forward now, quickly, before I have to remember why it was important to me to begin with. The association may be equally awkward to contemplate.
Regardless of how the songs on my life's soundtrack were chosen, and by whom; irrespective of why this song seems like a mistake in retrospect, or why I didn't listen more closely to that one when I had the chance, the bottom line is that the soundtrack is uniquely, inimitably, distinctively and inarguably mine and mine alone. No one else will understand it, or appreciate it—flaws, foibles and foolish mistakes notwithstanding. Maybe not even me.