Do you have a favorite song? Do you remember the first time you heard it? Does it count if it wasn’t immediately obvious to you that it would be your favorite song? Does it make sense to have a “favorite” “song” at all? Don’t your opinions and tastes and interests change over time like your palate, eyesight, and flexibility? Isn’t it kinda cringe to think that you have to keep holding a torch for a song just because it was super important to you at one point in your life? Don’t you ever grow up? Isn’t this just a Boomerified nostalgia trap? How late is too late to acquire a “new” favorite song? Do you have to know every fact about a song to make it your favorite?
One nice thing about living before smartphones and internet connections could be taken for granted was the ability to develop patience. I am sure people can still boost that stat organically, but now there are so many ways to cut short the process of knowing and waiting. It seems quaint now to think that I used to keep scrap paper and a pen in my car so I could write down small parts of lyrics to songs that I heard on the radio so I could search them up later online. Missing the DJ’s rundown of what you’re about to hear or had just heard is as torturous as any ancient curse.
A different kind of curse is the roommate who will not stop playing the same goddamned song over and over and over again. It gets so bad that you have to kick his door down to tell him to stop because that song is good but he doesn’t need to play it for two days straight.
You’ll forget about this incident and the song itself for almost a year. Then, as you dine alone, you’ll hear its last few measures while you are finding your seat. There are no lyrics you can make out but you know that synth part like it’s your own heartbeat. You spend the rest of the night wondering whether that was a song you heard as a child that you’ve heard again for the first time in decades or maybe just a song you heard the other day. It is of its time and ahead of its time at the same time.
You try to tell your friends about it and ask around about that one song you heard that you can’t hum or sing or mumble any part of because it’s like trying to make oxygen visible. You resign yourself to the fate that you’ll remember it eventually and can take someone by the shoulders and shake them back and forth while yelling, “What song is this? It’s so good!”
Months later, you’ll be working an office job that has a building-wide intranet where other nerds can share the MP3s they have added to their work computers. You can only seed five listeners at a time, so if you have a cool music library, others need to call dibs on it fast or they will be unable to share your bounty. Most users have created screen names, but others keep the generic First Name Last Name’s Library as their identity. You can learn a lot about a person through what they’re willing to share of their music collection publicly. You’ll get a warning when you are signing off for the day that will let you know you are cutting someone off if you close your connection while a user is still active. We’ve all been on the other side of that disconnection. Given that these files are from various sources, you’ll get the usual improperly tagged metadata during your searches. You would never be so careless with your own files. That annoyance won’t stop you from checking out “Track 01” by The KNIFE on a colleague’s account one morning in the summer.
Your world will slow down, invert, zoom in, and dazzle with color as your neurons pulse information from axons to dendrites. Before you can form a conscious thought, your cells, your veins, your soul, your self realizes that this is the song. At long last, you have an artist name and an album name. Your life is never again the same. You spend the rest of the morning listening to that song on repeat and then place an order for the CD at the local music shop down the street from your apartment.
That night is the usual night of the week where you play pick-up basketball on public courts with a group of dudes who are there more for the spirit of youth and the social aspects of the team sport than cut-throat competitiveness. Usually, you won’t want to “run full” with other groups of players because you’re content to play half-court games of two-on-two or three-on-three with your social circle. Sometimes, the nights are so full of energy that you can’t just claim your own part of the court for your good vibes only and you do have to play against these folks.
They choose you first because you’re the tallest one there, even though if they’d watched you play for the past 15 minutes, they would know better. Your knees are losing their spring even though you’re hardly past 24. The game starts and you are facing off against your own friends and also a couple of dudes who might have been four-year varsity starters in high school. The vibe usually sucks.
Tonight, though, you have Karin Dreijer’s vocals and Olof Dreijer’s synths in your mind and in your heart and you are unstoppable. You have never played basketball this well in your life. You aren’t just making shots, you’re causing turnovers, stealing passes, and dishing assists. It’s like the game is in slo-mo but you are at regular speed. This is all thanks to the power of music. A song you’ve heard dozens of times already and will hear hundreds of times in the years to come. At the end of the night, it’s not pure dominance that reigns over the court. It’s a gentle, but fierce feeling of peace as you get the twinge of realization that you are a more complete human being only because of music and the ways it connects you to other people.
You connect with music through files over the intranet or through plastic and vinyl at shops or under hoops after games. You realize “Heartbeats” isn’t just a song; it’s a symbol of how each of us can become a better person than we are through patiently waiting through new experiences and trials that life shows us. Then, at the perfect time, as regular as a heartbeat, a song will come into your life and reveal this truth to you once again.
YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:
No comments:
Post a Comment