This is my life: Six Songs

Like so many of the “personality inventories” that roam the internet, this is one I saw in a magazine somewhere, I know not where, but it intrigued me enough to sit down and think about mine. Music has been a part of my life always – before I knew what it was, before I knew my own affinity for it, music and songs were there.

“You Light Up My Life” Debbie Boone (1977)
This is not the first song I remember; that would be John Denver’s “Country Roads” (1973? 74?) which I have a vivid memory of hearing (and maybe singing?) while playing on the floor at my grandparents’ house in Wellsboro, PA. “You Light Up My Life,” which was a monster hit, all over the radio, was the first song I remember deliberately trying to learn the words to, to sing the tune, and to understand the meaning. I remember sitting on the swing set in my parents’ backyard at the house on Irvine Place and singing the words over and over again until they were committed to memory.

“Ode to Joy” Beethoven
This theme from the 9th Symphony was one of the first pieces of classical music I learned to play when I began playing the violin – so I probably learned it sometime in 1979 or 1980. It, along with Hayden’s “Minuet” and Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” is ingrained so deeply in my brain that I often hum it unconsciously, I finger the left hand when I’m trying to calm down or take my mind off something stressful, and now that I am older and know the hymn ("Joyful, joyful we adore thee) associated with the tune as well, it resonates deeply in my soul (as does Beethoven’s 5th Symphony). When I die, I want this hymn sung at my funeral, and I want to imagine that heaven is full of music beyond all comprehension.

“Flowers on the Wall” The Statler Brothers
The family vacation, all of us and all our stuff piled into the station wagon, heading south (sometimes north) and listening to the radio….One of the station wagons our family owned had a new-fangled 8 track tape deck in it, and we carried along a small selection of music – and the one song that sticks in my head forever is this one….we played that tape over and over and over (or so it seemed to me) so that we all hated the song. (This was just before cassette tapes and branching away from the AM gold into FM pop radio.)

“I’m on Fire” Bruce Springsteen
In the fall of 1984, I began high school and immediately crushed on a foreign exchange student. As girls are wont to do, I shared all my crush-worthy dreams with my best friend, telling her how much I “liked” him and never daring to do anything about it (story of my life, mostly). One day, sometime that fall, she asks me to sit down in the lunchroom and says she needs to tell me something – over the weekend, she’d “made out” with my crush at a party to this song, and knowing my feelings for him, she wanted my blessing? approval? permission? to go ahead and date him. I said yes, of course, because I was all about people-pleasing, and then I cried a lot. I've long since forgiven her and know I dodged a bullet with him, but this song still pains me and I’m 14 again, twinging deep in my soul, reminding me of the bittersweet crush and betrayal of a best friend.

“Moondance” Van Morrison / “Could I Have This Dance?” Anne Murray
The summer between high school and college, I watched two little girls in the afternoons so that their mom could go back to work. They were like three and 6-8 months old, so they napped a good portion of every day and after I’d done the dishes, there was not much for me to do except read or watch television, and I got hooked on soap operas. I’d watch “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and “General Hospital.” Then I discovered “Santa Barbara,” which was way more romantic and sweeping, and I would then flip back and forth between it and “General Hospital.” This was the summer of the romance between Eden’s sister and Cruz’s brother (I have no idea of their character names, nor of the actors who played them) but I remember them being shipwrecked, I think, on a deserted island, maybe, and a romantic dancing/kissing scene with “Moondance” playing in the background.
I've only once been asked to dance at a wedding (and I've been to a bunch of weddings over the years) and it was to Anne Murray’s song (that I've always liked), at Becky and Guy’s wedding, that Jimmy (a guy from church who I’d known forever) asked me to dance. It ranks as one of the best moments in my life (and I’m sure he had no idea). Anyone who wants to romance me need only put one of these songs on and ask me to dance.

“Walking on Sunshine” Katrina and the Waves
No matter how old I get, how many songs I hear, I will always be a child of the 80's, and this song will always make me happy. It just does.


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