How music infiltrates my life, my memories and my debut novel
Growing up, I always thought music was the language my family spoke. Or at least it seemed that way to me when I was ten, jamming out to Chicago, Journey, Pat Benatar or Queen with my dad. Or singing harmonies with my sister along to my mom’s music of ABBA, The Everly Brothers, and John Denver. Car trips, of which there were quite a few, were moments of finely tuned balance between the music of my parents and everyone’s sanity.
My dad made sure we had the latest in music equipment. We had a eight track player ensconced in a wooden cabinet that left around the time I was 8 or 9 years old. A large record player with an AV receiver replaced it. My sister had the infamous ’80s ladybug record player, removing the wings to play the 45s and 33s she convinced my dad to buy.
I remember the first time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody — she played it in her room over and over again, the operatic murmuring rising and falling before the guitars took over. And then beast of all beasts, my dad brought home a double cassette tape player. We had that the rest of my home-based life, and a record collection that never got played after it arrived.
We were the original MTV generation, spending hours watching videos and marveling at the ingenuity of it all. I remember being twelve years old, on a Friday night, breathlessly waiting with six of my closest friends for the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. There was a lot of screaming when it did and none of it because it was scary.
My first concert was Barry Manilow at age ten with my mom. I fell asleep, lulled by the dulcet tones of his voice. My second concert was at Summerfest in Milwaukee at age sixteen, dancing and jamming out to PIL, The Sugar Cubes and New Order. That concert had more than one layer of emotion running beneath and through it. I still feel good about it, even though the darkness of that day was what we escaped to attend it.
New Order’s Elegia became the anthem of my teenage sorrows and emotionally heavy home life. I played it on repeat; it still kicks me in the gut if I listen to it when I’m sad. The Eurythmics were (and still are) my favorite band. They are on the list of music I’d keep if I ever got stranded on a desert island. And not their most popular songs either, but the ones I listened to and sang to all by myself in my bedroom in the basement. I can still feel the heavy material of the floor length corduroy skirt I loved to wear wrapping around my legs while I twirled and dreamed and danced.
Recently, I published my first book; the book I dreamed of writing during those moments in the basement spinning around to music. After manically checking that my book was, indeed, available on Amazon, I went down to the kitchen to make dinner (life goes on, even in big moments such as these). Instead of cutting vegetables, I cranked up the stereo. Bizarre Love Triangle blasted from the speakers as I cried in happiness and spun in my kitchen. I could feel the whispers of a white corduroy skirt against my shins as I did so.
Mixed tapes
Music continued to be a thread that held us together. After my sister left for college, she created a birthday mix tape or CD for me every year until I turned thirty-seven. I found that the music she included in those tapes were songs I liked closer to the age she was when she made them (she’s three years older than me). A futuristic birthday gift of sorts.
Those mixed tapes and CDs had something the generations that followed never understood in the age of playlists, shuffles, and random song choices — the specific order the music must be placed on the cassette or CD. It is an art; it takes patience and time, listening again and again to the song order and then revising it. We curated our mix tapes like they curate their Youtube channels or hashtags.
I found myself relearning the skill recently, when I created a playlist for my debut novel; each song chosen for the lyrics and the message they provided, but also put together in a way that follows the story in my book. I discovered new music and old, interesting genre mashups and clear genre examples. I carefully crafted it in Spotify, only to find out the free version only ever shuffles the order of the music. Hopefully those fans who listen to it will follow the order I so diligently and painstakingly set out, will honor its order created out of the music of my heart. It’s on my website even now, waiting to be played on repeat.
Music made its way into my book in other unexpected ways. My main character dances in several scenes, jams out in others. But it wasn’t just a backdrop. The lyrics found their way in, like minor threads into the larger tapestry; not in full, but in the imagery, in a whisper of a scene or an altered chapter title. Upon rereading it for the 2,378th time, I realized just how much music infiltrated my creative expression and my writing.
Growth & tastes
When I am angry, I listen to songs that allow me to rage – Seven Nation Army, Toxicity, Chop Suey, Limp, Standing in the Shower Thinking.
When I am sad, I turn on the music that never fails to prompt me to dance – True Faith, Bizarre Love Triangle, Cecilia, Uptown Funk, Higher Ground, I Melt with You.
When I am happy and looking to harmonize, I sit in my stairwell, with it’s amazing acoustics and belt out songs like Rolling in the Deep, Long Ride Home, Keep Breathing, Grace, Hallelujah, The Sound of Silence.
When I’m writing, editing, or need to concentrate, I blast film scores, videogame soundtracks, and opera, the swell of Leaving Earth, American Beauty, Puccini a soothing backdrop from which to focus.
My music choices are varied and diverse. I have a little bit of everything, except for country and rap, of which only a handful exists in my library. My music taste grows and changes as I grow and change; I look forward to seeing where it takes me.
But one thing that will never change is my love of the music from my youth. The music deeply entrenched in my memories, good and bad, joyous and tragic. It never fails to bring me back to those days when a good song meant singing and dancing and a bad one meant waiting until it was over or doing my best to fast forward through it.
With a recent update to iTunes, I lost one of my most precious items — my original Bad Day soundtrack; a carefully curated list of songs designed to make me feel better. I hadn’t listened to it in a while; I hadn’t needed to. I dreamed about it recently; a whisper of the songs on it teasing my brain, there but not there. I might recreate it or make a different one, just in case. It won’t be as good, but it will do what it is meant to — lift me up when life is overwhelming.
Maybe that’s how I survived the life I’ve had up until now, taking a cue from that which sustained me, soothed me, uplifted me, and allowed me to express whatever emotions I allowed out into the light. I only know I notice when I haven’t listened to music in a while and take steps to make it a priority.
For both my parents, music is no longer as prevalent as it was. For my dad, his life changed and with it, his need or desire to listen to music. He still does, just not as much as before. And I mourn that for him. And for them.
I only hope I never have to mourn it for me.
This article is written in response to a challenge issued by Anthony O’Dugan to write how music saved my life. My debut urban fantasy mystery novel, The Deep Space Between, is available on Amazon & other fine retailers. Originally published in The Writing Cooperative.