I thought through this week's prompt just now in the shower; building up huge amounts of steam, lathering my hair and yes, if you must know, singing!
Now I'm in my soft, bright green robe, hunched over the computer with a towel around my head, tapping out my random thoughts about song.
One of my best friends in high school had this thing, based on the romantic notion of a couple's 'song' whereby he claimed that he had a song to represent each of his meaningful friendships, that listening to said song instantly reminded him of that person.
It's a fun thought experiment but sometimes this is not so easily predicted or contrived. Music is a funny and wondrous thing, how it weaves between and underpins and sometimes even creates our memories.
Sometimes song associations just seem kind of . . . wrong. For example, the aforementioned friend was my sister's ex-boyfriend and his song for her was U2's So Cruel. Lovely.
I myself cringe every time I hear Chris Isaak's Somebody's Crying, remembering a first love, some very awkward moments and a letter, thankfully unsent. I may or may not be blushing right now!
Paul Kelly's Bradman oddly reminds me of my dad and his bizarre (and very un-Australian!) antipathy toward 'The Don'.
But then, there are times when it's just exactly right:
Clare Bowditch's You Make Me Happy makes me smile and think of my beautiful younger sister.
That lovely old hymn Day is Dying in the West never fails to resurrect an image of my beloved grandparents, praying and reciting 1 Corinthians 13 together each evening of their 66 year marriage.
I feel a flash of pure remembered happiness when Crowded House's Four Seasons in One Day plays on the radio. I picture myself and a carload of friends barelling down Great Eastern Highway; all in our last year of high school, freedom like the open road at midnight stretching on ahead.
A disparate collection of musings on song, threads of melody woven through the fabric of memory. And with apologies to my old friend, picking songs for the moments and the people is not always so simple. The soundtrack to our lives is an unexpected one.
Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker









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