music is such an intensely sensory experience – there are few other things i can think of with the power to reach in under my solar plexus, clutch at my heart, and either lift it skyward or send it plummeting through the pit of my stomach. that can transport me back to a time and place with such immediacy it’s like reliving the experience all over again.

i’ve ruined a lot of perfectly good songs for myself – songs i insisted on playing in endless loop during particularly painful breakups, or the depths of a dark pool of depression. there are songs that have all the force of a suckerpunch to the gut when i hear them unexpectedly, knocking the wind out of me while blowing me sideways. i often wish i could go back in time to that girl and tell her to turn it off, because someday she’ll regret tainting such a great song with permanent greys of sadness. and still, once they become tangled up in memory, it’s hard to let them go, no matter how painful they are.

but there are also songs of such immense, irrepressible joy that i can hardly contain myself. songs that make it impossible to sit still – there is no other remedy for it but to sing at the top of my lungs. music that makes me want to light the world on fire and dance as it burns. music that makes me physically high, like being full of sweet, pure oxygen and light. deliciousness.

so i find myself hoarding music these days. greedily inhaling the temperament of certain rhythms and lyrics. collecting emotions in a jar. searching for sparkling new highs like diamonds in the weeds. piling them up in heaps. drowning out the drab, careworn songs of another time, another girl, with a flood of brilliant sound and light.

the ragged:

fleetwood mac (stevie nicks) – landslide

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and the glorious:

the hold steady – stuck between stations

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