Time Travel

For me, music is memory. I hear a certain song and it takes me to a time, a place, a moment that is special to me.

I hear Rossini's William Tell Overture and I'm at my fathers old house, listening to a crackling fire, drinking hot, sweet, milky tea, and listening to dad read me and Yolande the Hobbit with all the voices.

I hear Peter Paul and Mary and I'm on one of hundreds of long car trips with mum and Davy going to Melbourne, or Sydney, or Brisbane, or driving across America listening to Davy sing along to every song.

Because of this attachment to music, which I'm sure is genetic, the gift that Americo got me for Christmas this year is probably the best gift I've ever been given. He made me a mix tape. Of all the songs that are "us". Our Rockband favourites, the ones that we'd hear in the car when we were driving around San Francisco or from Sydney to Canberra after a long plane flight, or the ones that just remind us of each other. Every moment of our four and a half years together, all on one USB drive.

I went for a long drive today and listened to all the song and it was like he wasn't 12,000km away, it was like he was in the car with me. I could smell the Cool Water and feel his hand on my leg and every song was perfect.

And since they're all in my head, a list, and some of my favourite memories:

Hey there Delilah - Plain White Tee's
It was probably near midnight on a Sunday night and I'd been called into work to do some testing. And the road was empty and it was cold and this song came on the radio and it just reminded me of him. We didn't know where we were going, friends, something more, was it too soon after my divorce, was the long distance too tough, but in that moment, listening to that song, I thought of nothing but him. And that was that, all the questions were irrelevant, we'd make it work.

Bubbly - Colbie Caillat
Just one of those songs, it was probably the lyrics, but we just loved it. The lyrics reminded him of me. And it just become special over time.

California Love - Dr Dre Tupak 
Obviously.

Oh Sherrie - Steve Perry 
So ridiculous. For a week on my first trip to San Francisco he had this song stuck in his head and had no idea what it was or who did it. Then we were in a winery in Napa and they were playing it in the background and we were both singing along with it trying to remember the name of the song. It was a great moment.

Sweet Child O'Mine - Guns'N'Roses
Once upon a time I was telling Americo about a crush I had when I was 14. This crush, wannabe poet and bad boy, gave me a love note once that was the lyrics to Sweet Child and Americo thought that was pretty pathetic. And so, he rewrote Sweet Child with new lyrics, just for me. It's somewhere in my house on a piece of paper, but I can't find it.

I'm Afraid of Americans - Bowie
Ha!

Piano Man - Billy Joel
Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day
Superstition - Stevie Wonder 
ABC - Jackson 5
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
our favourite Rockband songs. Some mornings when I was in SF we would wake up, before even coffee, and start playing, singing our throats sore.

Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons
Every time we got in a car in San Francisco EVERY TIME this song was on the radio. And we'd sing along like idiots.

New York Minute - The Eagles
From the West Wing episode Somebodies Going to Emergency, Somebodies Going to Jail, one of my favourite episodes of my favourite show. We've watched it together a few times, and watched it apart a few times. Just this Christmas I started watching it, and was a couple of episodes into season 1, and then he decided he wanted to watch it too. So I spent whole days half watching where I was up to, and more time listening to the episode he was watching. And we'd talk about politics, and the characters, and science, and language and just talk for hours. About everything. And it was perfect. He's my Toby, my amazing writer.

Land Down Under - Men at Work
He taunts me with this song. Constantly.

And dozens and dozens of other songs that were moments of our lives that are precious and wonderful and just make me love him so much that he would sit down and think of these songs that mean so much to us.

Thank you, love, it means so much that you know me "us" so well. And that you know me so well that you knew I'd love this.

Now every time I get into the car instead of listening to a shitty radio show with sexist hosts and bad music I get to remember all the great moments we've had together. And I'll probably be far less cranky at work.

The soundtrack to my life

In 1994 a guy I was involved with went to see a band he liked called Pearl Jam. He asked me to go, but my fear of crowds made me stay at home, but when I saw him the next day he played me their album, Ten, and I just though "fuck this is great" but didn't really get hugely into it, they didn't change my life or anything.

Cut to maybe three years later and I was in this relationship with a guy who smacked me around some. A friend decided I need a wake up call and made me a mix-tape of various "fuck that dude" songs, including Pearl Jam's Better Man (repeated a lot).

That did change my life. 

I walked away from the relationship because of my friend, and because I knew I did, in fact, deserve a better man. 

Years later I received apologies in the mail in the form of handwritten letters of nothing but the lyrics to Black. 

And when I was 19, maybe 20, I finally decided to let my dad know what he meant in my life. I gave him a mixed 'tape' of my own, a CD containing Daughter, and photos of me growing up, all the moments he'd missed in my life.

Every moment of my life where I stopped, and made a choice, and decided my future went there was to a sound track provided by Pearl Jam.

The great moments, the terrible ones, the days of my early 20's where I locked myself in the bathroom and played those songs over and over again until I could find a place where I didn't want to give up. All of it is tied to this band, these songs, these moments that I used to remember and cry, but now, I can smile fondly at these moments that changed my life.

These songs that took me from one place to another, these songs helped me sleep, helped me have the confidence to get off the plane, these songs take me through the last 2km of my workout, they take me away from the awful days at work as I crank them up to 20 backing out of the car park and sing along at the top of my lungs and everything is ok.

My adult life, who I am, what I want to be, has been defined by the memories that have Pearl Jam playing in the background.

I don't know when these men were born, where they live, what they do when they're not being Pearl Jam, but if I could meet anyone in the world, it'd be these dudes that changed the course of my life, just by doing what they love so much.

I'm a better person 'cause of the memories made to your music.