Lilie Green

1. turntable 2. Rock Out in Color

I'm rediscovering music (again). I seem to go through these cycles with both books and with music; I go through long droughts and then start drinking them in like a woman dying in the desert.

I keep forgetting how uplifting and inspiring and true it can be.

I forget how a certain kind of chord or melody can grip my heart and wring it to a pulp. Maybe I am naive, but I cant help believing Fleetwood Mac when they tell me that yesterday is gone, and to not stop thinking about tomorrow.

Will it be here, and will it be better than before?

I am swayed by their conviction that it will.

So cynical when it comes to television, movies, news programs...somehow I lose that finely-honed edge when it comes to good music.

I hope I never get too old to appreciate music from every spectrum -- of course opera can bring me to an almost holy place, but a bubble-gum 80's tune can reduce me to tears, if it strikes just the right note of nostalgia and innocence.

I know that people associate different smells with distinct memories, but since I am "scent-challenged", it is music that can take me spinning back to my childhood (Roxy Music, Cat Stevens, ELO, Dire Straits), my adolescence (U2, Rolling Stones, INXS, Duran Duran, the Pixies), my college years (Cake, the Cardigans, Barenaked Ladies, Soul Coughing, REM), and more recently, my "Tokyo years" (Macy Gray, John Mayer, Jack Johnson, Liz Phair, Death in Vegas).

Then there are the specific songs that played a role in their own regard:

the dance I choreographed and performed to:Where Do I Begin by the Chemical Brothers, Don't Leave Me This Way, which a fellow run crew member and I would sing to each other during a giddy summer internship at the Adirondack Theater Festival, listening to Lovefool ad nauseum with my roommates freshman year after falling under the spell of Baz Lurman's Romeo and Juliet...love me love me, say that you love me... singing karaoke for the first time to Like a Prayer...

realizing I wanted an old flame back in my life while watching an incredibly passionate performance of Beethoven's Concerto no.5... realizing I wanted him back out of it when Time to Say Goodbye kept playing in my head,

crying backstage with my best friend every time Janis' Take a Piece of My Heart played while we ran the lights and sounds for a high school play -- I thought I actually knew something about heartbreak then... oh, the innocence...

Don't underestimate what music can do for you, for your heart and your mind.

Dave has kept me company in dark times, he's shared a drink with me and told me to keep going. Liz and I have had some empowered-girl times -- times where we swore off men in one breath and sang their praises in the next.

Yaiko got me out of bed in the morning, Melanie C. brightened up my gloomy room while I did laundry, Macy brought a party to my daily train commute, B.B. King wailed with me, and Jack kept me company until I could fall asleep.

The soundtrack is always changing... and today?

Today is kind of like this: totally nostalgic, a little bit silly, and, as always, filled with that ineffable wonderment.