Creating separation: Disassociation of music and events

04/11/12
Because my Zune (I'm such a hipster) is pulling a temporary vanishing act, I've been forced to just grab a CD on the way out the door for my on-my-way-to-work listening pleasure for the past few days.  Today, I grabbed No Doubt's Return of Saturn.  It's a strange album to listen to for a couple of reasons. Number one, I bought it with a gift card given to me by Mrs. Bowser, my cooperating teacher in my final student teaching assignment in Spring of 2000.  So, for the last few days, I'd listen to it while driving to Girard High School and back.  For some reason, the album really connected to me.  Most of the songs on the disc dealt with Gwen Stefani's longing for motherhood and the internal conflict she was finding--career or family.  At some strange level, my confusion as to whether I'd FIND a teaching job--or did I really EVEN WANT to teach at all--that connected to the album, in my mind.   I was also reading a lot of Sylvia Plath, which I recently found out was what Gwen was reading at the time.  So, maybe that's a connection.  Strange.  Secondly, the album is odd in that it escaped my decision, around 1995, to separate songs from life experiences.

Everyone connects music to times in their lives, right?  Wrong.  Not me.  I force myself to avoid it.  It started with the death of my grandmother, Meem, in October 1995.  She had ridiculously long calling hours.  On the way to the funeral home, for three days straight, I'd listen to "Jail" from Down's album, Nola.  Here is a link to the most depressing track I've heard in my life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrfz71YEOZc

The song has nothing to do with death, really.   But, after the saddest week I've ever known--now I always hear that song, and have to battle tears.  Everything, from hearse rides, to flowers in caskets, to handwritten poems tucked into her hands--that song was the soundtrack.  Hell, I have gray hair on my head from those three days.  Literally.  So, I made the decision.  I wasn't going to let experiences form an association with songs.  This is immensely difficult.  Especially for someone like me, who connects to music on multiple levels.  Life of Agony's River Runs Red album, Billy Joel's And So It Goes, the aforementioned Down song--these things were destroyed by negative spaces within my existence.  So I turned that switch off.  KCi and JoJo's song "All My Life" was a song that D and I danced to almost every Saturday at Sammi Mac's from ages like, 21 to 24. Logically, that was the song for our first dance as husband and wife.  So, that song, pleasantly, has also been allowed to form a deep emotional connection to a memory.  Otherwise, I've blocked that from my psyche. 

Is this strange?  Are there songs you connect to, on a personal level?  Do you regret those connections, or do you cherish them?

I came up with a blog topic while listening to Gwen Stefani singing about washing in someone else's old bathwater.  Odd, on its own.