Non Livejournal-y Livejournal-esque post

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
(the last two instructions were redacted because they were either irrelevant or ridiculous)

I saw this on someone’s Facebook page, and started to do it without the intention of actually writing anything down. I typically find these things to be silly little exercises that serve no other purpose than to postpone boredom. However, as I listened to the songs that came up, I felt compelled to recount little vignettes that sprang up from each track.

1. Opening Credits: Gronlandic Edit – Of Montreal

A good start! I loved Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer and listened to it on more than one road trip. It has generally good connotations. This song in particular, though, fails to elicit anything past a vague emotional response.

2. Waking Up: Two Halves – My Morning Jacket

Meh. Too bad I really didn’t like this album. What does it make me feel? Nothing. Well, that’s not true. I felt pretty pissed off when MMJ released this festering, stinking pile of shit called “Evil Urges.” I haven’t been so disappointed by a new album by anyone in quite some time.

3. Falling in Love: Three Hopeful Thoughts – Rilo Kiley

This song certainly doesn’t make me think of falling in love. Plenty of other songs in my library do. I really enjoy this album, but this song is one of my least favorite tracks from the disc.

4. Fight Song: A Thread Cut With A Carving Knife – Stars

Okay, sure, it’s my “fight song.” But not in the university-fight-song sense. That would be silly. However, if we’re talking boy-girl emotional fight, perhaps with screaming, I’d say okay. This song is about people so fucked-up-sad that they want to die, but can’t bring themselves to commit suicide. Oh yeah, that reminds me: The only way this would be appropriate for me would be if it only applied to when I was 18 or 19. I think that’s the only time I’ve been such a silly shit, pining for women that either didn’t want me, I couldn’t bring myself to ask for, or women I couldn’t quit. Ugh.

5. Breaking Up: Dreamin’ Man – Neil Young

This one’s slightly better, I suppose. At least it has a melancholy quality about it. Neil Young, especially Harvest Moon, reminds me of my childhood and my mother. It does not remind me of breaking up. Very little music reminds me of breaking up. When I break up with someone, it is for one of two reasons: One – I do not want to be with that person anymore because our relationship is shit. In that case, I would continue listening to my music with the same relish as usual; perhaps with more, but not to the point of emotional attachment. Two: I do want to break up with someone, but harbor no ill will toward her or the relationship, but find it necessary to break up. In this case, my music situation is the same. Perhaps I might avoid songs that remind me of the good thing that has passed, but it is more likely that I simply continue my life.

6. Prom: Undertow – Stars

Whoa! Seriously? Two Stars songs isn’t strange, but two from the same short EP is. It’s also interesting that these two songs by Stars came up considering how much I’ve listened to them here in Korea. Prom was a long time ago, and it was much less than magical. Undertow is a pretty song. Prom, for me, was with a very nice girl who happened to be Mormon, and thusly taken home before 1am (or something like that. I can’t remember the exact time, but I remember it being “early”). When I took her home, her parents immediately turned on the floodlights to preempt any smoochery. I immediately went to a party where I killed a bottle of rum, made out with my best female friend, and tried to hook up with a 21 year old girl (with hilarious lack of success).

7. Life: Plenty is Never Enough – Tenement Halls

This is a song I listened to every few minutes for a month or two when I was in college. I guess it makes sense, since I do that a lot with music. This song reminds me of the snow of Pullman during a time when I was single and happy (as opposed to single and unhappy, in a relationship and unhappy, or in a relationship and happy). I remember running in the cold on hard ice, getting drunk with Eric on $2 micro night, and trying to regain my self confidence.

8. Mental Breakdown: Irish Goodbye – Maria Taylor

Ah ha. Well, this merely proves how ridiculous this concept is. This song makes me kind of want to party a little bit. Either that, or it reminds me of a trip I took to California in grad school. Probably both, because all I did there was have fun with my best friends. We did a lot of good evil, if you know what I mean, and I will remember that trip as one of two outrageous road trips that didn’t end in failure and misery. Although I did see a man get beaten in the streets of Oakland with a baseball bat and was subsequently chased by his attackers. Remind me not to go back there.

9. Driving: Stacked Crooked – The New Pornographers

The New Pornos, regardless of the song (as long as it comes from The Electric Version or Twin Cinema), remind me of my senior year of college, a generally happy time. I believe this particular track takes me back to when I lived in a house with my then-girlfriend’s friend, Ashley. It was a beautiful summer. The sunsets seen from our front porch were painted in spectacular golds, reds, and purples; the colors only seen in great expanses in places like Pullman, with wide-open fields and dusty air.

10. Flashback: Fire Island, AK

Sigh. This really isn’t working. If it were to be my choice for this song, I would chose the one most apt to push me into a near-lucid flashback: Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), by Arcade Fire. In fact, fuck it, I’m going to write about that, not this song (although I really do enjoy it). Neighborhood #1 affects me like few songs do. My brother gave me Funeral well before I went to France when I was in college, but I didn’t like the album until I went to Paris and Bordeaux. I listened to the album almost non-stop. For some reason, this song is the song that really takes me back there. It is very difficult to describe, but I think it’s the epic nature of the song and of my experience in France that somehow melded together to form an intense trigger for memory. I’d write more about it, but I already wrote a short story about some of my time in France. That was hard enough.

11. Getting Back Together: So Let Go – The Good Life

HA! Are you kidding me, iTunes/Fate/Gods of Music? You had me “So Let Go” for my “getting back together” song? Oh, Irony, you are a tricky bitch. It’s probably somewhat obvious from the song title, but this song is about letting go – in the metaphorical, relationship-oriented fashion. There’s no good story behind this song. I merely enjoy it. It helps when I’m sad, but it came to me at a particularly happy time in my life, and I was able to appreciate it for what it is: a really good song. I don’t have any emotional attachment to it, and I’m glad, because I feel like this would only attach itself to some horrific breakup, and the song would then be ruined forever.

12. Wedding : Chicken Pox – I’m From Barcelona

Uh oh. This one is lame. Yeah, I like the song all right. It reminds me of grad school. It was a pretty good time. Other than that, nothing to report. I haven’t listened to this track in a while, but I can safely say nothing is attached to it. I was temped to skip it, but didn’t, obviously. You can’t become emotionally attached to every song.

13. Birth of a Child: Under the Blacklight – Rilo Kiley

F’reals? Okay, here’s what I see in this one: My kid has just been born. For some reason, the birth is rave-themed. Everyone is waving glowsticks and getting into the hospital’s drugs. The baby doesn’t cry, he (or she) merely waves his (or her) hands like one of those douchebag ravers. That reminds me! Once, Tyler, Eric, and I decided to try to go to a Mariner’s game. After stopping at a wholesale wine seller to pick up some fun for the game, we walked toward Safeco Field. The stadium is in the industrialized section of Seattle, and there are a number of warehouses that have been converted in to music venues and the occasional rave hotspot. Outside of one such establishment, we past a pack of the weirdos, all standing in line for something. Tyler, being the hilarious turd that he is, walked up to some black-clad fellows, started waving his hands like a raver, yelling, “Light show?! Light show?! Light show?!” into their faces. I was laughing much too hard to register their reactions.

14. Final Battle: Genocide – The Offspring

Whoa! An appropriate choice by The Fates! I mean, kinda. It’s off of The Offspring’s Smash, and it’s called “Genocide.” I guess that’s pretty appropriate for a final battle. This entire album reminds me of junior high. I was in my wannabe punk phase (which was more pitiful than most wannabe punks, because I didn’t try very hard, obviously). I’ll be honest, here. When I listen to this shit, I don’t feel bad about my past, because I was having fun, but I was having fun mostly, well, alone. I would blast this stuff in my room and either surf the Internet via dialup, or I would read or daydream. By myself. Kind of sad, but it’s the truth. Just picture a younger, scrawnier Tony doing that in his off-time, fantasizing about being cooler, kissing girls he liked, or something else fairly juvenile.

15. End Credits: Love Fool – The Cardigans

Let this one be a testament to the honesty of this post. Okay, okay, the only reason this is included is because I fully recognize that after reading 15 explanations of songs that only mean something to me, very few people will actually finish this post (I bet if anyone does beyond my parents, it will be Elizabeth K. Weaver). The entire reason I have this song is – wait, wait. There are two reasons. The first (and primary) reason is seventh grade. I believe that’s when the movie Romeo + Juliet came out. Yeah, I saw it. I was impressed with the visuals, but absofuckin’lutely hated Baz Luhrmann. Therefore, I had to keep the fact that I enjoyed the movie in the closet. Well, that and it would have been dangerous for a 12 or 13 year old boy to say he liked that movie. In any case, that song made me want to love someone well before I understood what love was. The twangy, poppy guitar, catchy beat, subject matter, and Nina Persson’s ethereal voice affected me in a nice, immature way. Regardless of immaturity, the feeling stuck. But most importantly, it’s also attached to the innocence of that time, so when I listen to it I can go back to being a pre-teen/early teen which, despite my self-deprecating commentary, was a decent time (lack of worries, complex relationships, all of that).

So, what began as a way to prove to myself that little surveys like this are still ridiculous and deserve to be confined to LiveJournal (or some such nonsense) has been a (hopefully, slightly funny) recap of disjointed portions of my life. Thanks for tuning in, and I’ll write something about Korea the next time I don’t drink wine, gin, beer, and a shit-ton of soju in one night and blast my weekend straight to blackout hell.