My list gives away my age. These songs deliver me to my teens & 20s. Smile/shudder.
Alphaville - Forever Young; Prince - 1999 / Let’s Go Crazy; Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill;
Robert Palmer - Johnny & Mary / Boys of Summer; John Farnham - You’re the Voice; Neil Young - Heart of Gold; Clannad - In a Lifetime; Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time; Bat Benatar - We Belong; Men Without Hats - Safety Dance; The Beatles - She’s Leaving Home; Jethro Tull - Flying Colours / Pussy Willow; Human League - Don’t You Want Me; The Dream Academy - Life In A Northern Town; Moving Pictures - What About Me
Mondo Rock - Come Said the Boy; Joe Jackson - Real Men; Cliff Richard - Wired for Sound; Billy Joel - Pressure / And So It Goes; The Police - Russians / Moon Over Bourbon St
Wow this was just pure poetry, and honestly I could just FEEL everything you were speaking to in my own experience.
Music was, I believe, one of the things that kept me alive during those years of intensity. I was very much like you, a big feeler, and there was so much chaos and pain in my reality, music was a literal escape from the seeming clashing and banging that was 'real life' into the organized, expressed and melodic world of art making life make a little more sense.
I remember hours spent in my car driving to no where, skipping back one more song (C.D players anyone?), one more street. Nights laying in bed till 4 am choreographing to my teen pop songs.
Music always had a way of helping me feel a catharsis I often couldn't find anywhere else. I could cry. I could move my body. I could FEEL things without them getting stuck in the clunky way I tried to express and explain - because the mathematical sequence of the songs seemed to be able to neatly carry through all that mess into a fully formed expulsion. I believe that the music actually helped me to form the capacity to express myself in a more coherent way.
Today it's still this way for me. Music fully alters my mood - and those old songs really do send me back to a time in space I honestly, don't miss. But it is amazing to see how much has shifted since those days of never ending self doubt, tears and a quest for something better I couldn't see - but I could feel and I could hear.
Art is one of those things - I don't know that we can explain it because it seems to usher in a connection that goes beyond our words. To listen to someone poetically pour their heart out in a series of complex rhythms and rhymes, it's more than the sum of its parts. It helps us process our own experience, and it gives us a felt glimpse into that of others.
That afternoon you spent, sounds like a dream. The distance from the pain where the joy still exists, shared with a love. What could be better?
I LOVE your point about rhythm and sequence being able to contain/carry/hold all those huge and messy feelings. I never thought about it and yet it’s SO true! And so much of the music we fall in love with is also written by people in their own youthful throes of whatever. 🙏🙏🙏
Ah, the soft squishy consistency of middle age. How I love it. How I sink into the blissful neutrality of it. How well you evoke it through your words. And how much I would have avoided it in my youth!
For me: Tori Amos. Sting. And weirdly, Monteverdi.
So, so helpful, Rowan. Seriously - that distinction between the nostalgia for the freedom and wildness of our younger selves vs. the reality of all that + the uncertainty and inexperience we were operating with. So often I see the former glorified without referring to the cost we paid for the latter. There's so much grace in the stage of life I'm in now - I needed this reminder!
Ro, thank you for your words and Ani’s. I follow this Raven named Poe and his keepers(rehab place) make puzzles for his enrichment. This was a delightful people puzzle, I enjoyed it greatly.
I discovered the magic of my late teens/ early 20’s music a few years ago. My husband is a musician and instinctively knew that I needed to hear it. So all those rides to chemo, doctors, radiation, hospital and back I was surrounded with all my favorite songs of the late 80’s early 90’s. It was a wormhole, I felt my past self on those rides as I was dying, she was with me along with my #4. I didn’t have the words yet to label it, thank you JBT!
The were many goth classics in that love letter of a playlist, but one stood out because it was uniquely my love back in the goth/industrial days of my youth, The The.
The The like Ani DiFranco is post punk, alt rock and genre bending. When I was in college I worked overnight shifts at the local convenience store. It was a tiny town and from 10pm to 4 am no one but the occasional drunk college kid. I played The The on repeat. I was goth kid studying political philosophy. I was filled w righteous indignation that only exist in youth.
“Why is it that anything on this earth we do not understand We are pushed onto our knees to worship or to damn? Those are the rules of religion Those are the laws of the land That's how the forces of darkness have suppressed the spirit of man That's why human beings still walk on all fours Whilst in the presence of their so called superiors”
-The The, “The Violence Of Truth”
And
“And our youth, oh youth, are being seduced By the greedy hands of politics and half truths The beaten generation, the beaten generation Reared on a diet of prejudice and mis-information The beaten generation, the beaten generation Open your eyes, open your imagination” - The The, “Beaten Generation”
The chemo and constant anemia filtered out the white hot angst of my 20’s and the passion of that age was left. Righteous anger is delicious in the moment but just like those sweet drinks, the hangover was rough. It was much longer before I let my righteous anger. I now actively avoid it.
Besides the angst there was awkward nerdy love. And long before college and the big glorious oak, I loved trees. In college my friends would look for me at Tracy’s tree, but she was her own magnificence and alive before my great grandmother. The The understood.
“And it's the first and the last time That we'll ever meet Just falling leaves Dropping from winter trees Strangers touching the parts That love cannot reach”
-The The, “Weatherbelle”
And sometimes
“So let us take off our crosses and lay them in a tin And let our weakness become virtue instead of sin Our bodies stand naked as the day they were born And tremble like animals before a coming storm”
- The The, “Beyond Love”
I have a million joyous moments from my late teens and early 20’s but good grief the drama and tragedy of every little thing. It was 15 years crushed into 5. 5 because I changed from political science to studio arts mid way. My big break up album was Disintegration by The Cure. A million tears I dedicate to that album and I can feel the tug of her too. First true broken heart.
“If only I'd thought of the right words
I could have held on to your heart
If only I'd thought of the right words
I wouldn't be breaking apart all my pictures of you.”
-The Cure, “Pictures of You”
I wouldn’t mind going back to my 20 yr body if it didn’t come with that thin skin. It did allow that music to land in my bones. I didn’t understand oldies until those car rides, you could borrow a whisper of youth. Much like a the smell of cocoa on a cold day will bring me to my childhood and sense of play.
So much came in and luckily mostly wonderful but even a good thing is too much and not enough at 19 or even 23.
Lately the my music muses have been farther back, much farther back. I have developed a deep appreciation and love of classic blues. The older and grainier the recording the better. My husband dubbed it “haunted music”. While I cook, when I write T-Bone Walker in my ear, well this morning.
Why music one to two generations before me sings in my bones, I am not sure. But one of my theories is that the blues sang in the bones of The The and they sang it into my bones. The other is that because my family has been in the South for generations, it is part of inheritance. Just like trauma can echo throughout the generations invisible but just as real, more so for being unspoken and unseen.
Though she had always been by my side, until my illness and those car rides I didn’t get to know my #4. It has taken me a couple of years of practice to start to still myself to allow her to speak to me. Strangely enough through music. This winter when I was fussing w my phone I got up and went to the kitchen but it wasn’t my idea. I turned on a pod cast, my normal kitchen entertainment and I heard in my head, “No the blues”. So I turned on a blues play list and started preparing some veggies. I said to myself/#4.” Ok now what?” I started washing some carrots. A few seconds later Etta was singing in my bones as my #4, begging me to love her, to love myself. I was moved to tears and couldn’t catch my breath.
“Trust in me in all you do
Have the faith I have in you
Love will see us through, if only you trust in me
Why don't you, you trust me?”
-Etta James, “Trust in Me”
I have been changed, I now have a direct channel to my #4. I don’t even need the song played anymore, it is in my bones.
Thank you Ro, that made my morning. It was an Inventure to read yours, to ponder and to write. I really enjoyed the time traveling. My question is did you check out The The?
Great topic! Music from our formative years! I love how you reflected on the difference between what the songs meant to you as a teenager and what Ani meant in her lyrics. And how our memories of things can become distorted over time with different things merging and shifting. Well written ;)
I really enjoyed this post; I've been doing something similar over the past six months.
I, too, stumbled on Ani in my twenties, and her music was a complete revelation. Her audacity astonished and delighted me. She gave me a whole new perspective on what it is to be a female in this world, which opened the door to a freedom and acceptance in/of myself that i desperately needed. Her songs are like dear old friends, so many of them. 'Not a Pretty Girl,' and '32 flavors', and 'Lost Woman Song' and 'Out of Range,' come to mind right away. I can still chant 'Coming Up' word for word with all the proper inflections, and it still gives me chills.
The other musician who really impacted me was Tori Amos. Her music showed me you can paint pictures with words and feelings and even pain, and that has its own beauty. She gave me a voice for the anger and hurt and longing \that i didn't know how to express in my early years. In high school, a friend and i would drive at night for hours and hours, and just sing along to her first album, Little Earthquakes. I remember how cathartic that was, how it felt sacred, like prayer.
I've found that Ani and Tori's songs are still there, have become places inside me. Deeply grateful for these women, and for so many other artists who dared to go after truth and depth in their work.
Thanks for the chance to reflect on, and revisit these things!
It is quite often that I think about Ani and her music. Living in the Washington DC area. Coming into my womanhood… and even today I sit back and think of quotes from her music that acts as a map to where I have said I want to go.
My list gives away my age. These songs deliver me to my teens & 20s. Smile/shudder.
Alphaville - Forever Young; Prince - 1999 / Let’s Go Crazy; Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill;
Robert Palmer - Johnny & Mary / Boys of Summer; John Farnham - You’re the Voice; Neil Young - Heart of Gold; Clannad - In a Lifetime; Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time; Bat Benatar - We Belong; Men Without Hats - Safety Dance; The Beatles - She’s Leaving Home; Jethro Tull - Flying Colours / Pussy Willow; Human League - Don’t You Want Me; The Dream Academy - Life In A Northern Town; Moving Pictures - What About Me
Mondo Rock - Come Said the Boy; Joe Jackson - Real Men; Cliff Richard - Wired for Sound; Billy Joel - Pressure / And So It Goes; The Police - Russians / Moon Over Bourbon St
Love these! So much good time travel here.
Wow this was just pure poetry, and honestly I could just FEEL everything you were speaking to in my own experience.
Music was, I believe, one of the things that kept me alive during those years of intensity. I was very much like you, a big feeler, and there was so much chaos and pain in my reality, music was a literal escape from the seeming clashing and banging that was 'real life' into the organized, expressed and melodic world of art making life make a little more sense.
I remember hours spent in my car driving to no where, skipping back one more song (C.D players anyone?), one more street. Nights laying in bed till 4 am choreographing to my teen pop songs.
Music always had a way of helping me feel a catharsis I often couldn't find anywhere else. I could cry. I could move my body. I could FEEL things without them getting stuck in the clunky way I tried to express and explain - because the mathematical sequence of the songs seemed to be able to neatly carry through all that mess into a fully formed expulsion. I believe that the music actually helped me to form the capacity to express myself in a more coherent way.
Today it's still this way for me. Music fully alters my mood - and those old songs really do send me back to a time in space I honestly, don't miss. But it is amazing to see how much has shifted since those days of never ending self doubt, tears and a quest for something better I couldn't see - but I could feel and I could hear.
Art is one of those things - I don't know that we can explain it because it seems to usher in a connection that goes beyond our words. To listen to someone poetically pour their heart out in a series of complex rhythms and rhymes, it's more than the sum of its parts. It helps us process our own experience, and it gives us a felt glimpse into that of others.
That afternoon you spent, sounds like a dream. The distance from the pain where the joy still exists, shared with a love. What could be better?
I LOVE your point about rhythm and sequence being able to contain/carry/hold all those huge and messy feelings. I never thought about it and yet it’s SO true! And so much of the music we fall in love with is also written by people in their own youthful throes of whatever. 🙏🙏🙏
Patterns. The mathematics of life!
Perfectly put, it is beyond the words or intertwined with the words. Dance is a perfect tool to get an emotion unstuck.
It's so incredible how deeply complex we are and how deeply complex this whole reality is.
Ah, the soft squishy consistency of middle age. How I love it. How I sink into the blissful neutrality of it. How well you evoke it through your words. And how much I would have avoided it in my youth!
For me: Tori Amos. Sting. And weirdly, Monteverdi.
“Blissful neutrality” - 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌
So, so helpful, Rowan. Seriously - that distinction between the nostalgia for the freedom and wildness of our younger selves vs. the reality of all that + the uncertainty and inexperience we were operating with. So often I see the former glorified without referring to the cost we paid for the latter. There's so much grace in the stage of life I'm in now - I needed this reminder!
Oh wow, this is so well put, Laura, and actually opened this up for me even more. Thank you! 🙏
Grateful for all of your reflections.
Oh yes!! For me they were Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Lauri Anderson and Nina Hagen. But you make me want to listen to Ani Di Franco.
Wow, you’re so cool! I LOVE Lou Reed. Perfect Day is one of my time travel songs. ♥️
Josh I listen to Laura Anderson all the time. Her concert was an adventure! Talk about time traveling!
Ro, thank you for your words and Ani’s. I follow this Raven named Poe and his keepers(rehab place) make puzzles for his enrichment. This was a delightful people puzzle, I enjoyed it greatly.
I discovered the magic of my late teens/ early 20’s music a few years ago. My husband is a musician and instinctively knew that I needed to hear it. So all those rides to chemo, doctors, radiation, hospital and back I was surrounded with all my favorite songs of the late 80’s early 90’s. It was a wormhole, I felt my past self on those rides as I was dying, she was with me along with my #4. I didn’t have the words yet to label it, thank you JBT!
The were many goth classics in that love letter of a playlist, but one stood out because it was uniquely my love back in the goth/industrial days of my youth, The The.
The The like Ani DiFranco is post punk, alt rock and genre bending. When I was in college I worked overnight shifts at the local convenience store. It was a tiny town and from 10pm to 4 am no one but the occasional drunk college kid. I played The The on repeat. I was goth kid studying political philosophy. I was filled w righteous indignation that only exist in youth.
“Why is it that anything on this earth we do not understand We are pushed onto our knees to worship or to damn? Those are the rules of religion Those are the laws of the land That's how the forces of darkness have suppressed the spirit of man That's why human beings still walk on all fours Whilst in the presence of their so called superiors”
-The The, “The Violence Of Truth”
And
“And our youth, oh youth, are being seduced By the greedy hands of politics and half truths The beaten generation, the beaten generation Reared on a diet of prejudice and mis-information The beaten generation, the beaten generation Open your eyes, open your imagination” - The The, “Beaten Generation”
The chemo and constant anemia filtered out the white hot angst of my 20’s and the passion of that age was left. Righteous anger is delicious in the moment but just like those sweet drinks, the hangover was rough. It was much longer before I let my righteous anger. I now actively avoid it.
Besides the angst there was awkward nerdy love. And long before college and the big glorious oak, I loved trees. In college my friends would look for me at Tracy’s tree, but she was her own magnificence and alive before my great grandmother. The The understood.
“And it's the first and the last time That we'll ever meet Just falling leaves Dropping from winter trees Strangers touching the parts That love cannot reach”
-The The, “Weatherbelle”
And sometimes
“So let us take off our crosses and lay them in a tin And let our weakness become virtue instead of sin Our bodies stand naked as the day they were born And tremble like animals before a coming storm”
- The The, “Beyond Love”
I have a million joyous moments from my late teens and early 20’s but good grief the drama and tragedy of every little thing. It was 15 years crushed into 5. 5 because I changed from political science to studio arts mid way. My big break up album was Disintegration by The Cure. A million tears I dedicate to that album and I can feel the tug of her too. First true broken heart.
“If only I'd thought of the right words
I could have held on to your heart
If only I'd thought of the right words
I wouldn't be breaking apart all my pictures of you.”
-The Cure, “Pictures of You”
I wouldn’t mind going back to my 20 yr body if it didn’t come with that thin skin. It did allow that music to land in my bones. I didn’t understand oldies until those car rides, you could borrow a whisper of youth. Much like a the smell of cocoa on a cold day will bring me to my childhood and sense of play.
So much came in and luckily mostly wonderful but even a good thing is too much and not enough at 19 or even 23.
Lately the my music muses have been farther back, much farther back. I have developed a deep appreciation and love of classic blues. The older and grainier the recording the better. My husband dubbed it “haunted music”. While I cook, when I write T-Bone Walker in my ear, well this morning.
Why music one to two generations before me sings in my bones, I am not sure. But one of my theories is that the blues sang in the bones of The The and they sang it into my bones. The other is that because my family has been in the South for generations, it is part of inheritance. Just like trauma can echo throughout the generations invisible but just as real, more so for being unspoken and unseen.
Though she had always been by my side, until my illness and those car rides I didn’t get to know my #4. It has taken me a couple of years of practice to start to still myself to allow her to speak to me. Strangely enough through music. This winter when I was fussing w my phone I got up and went to the kitchen but it wasn’t my idea. I turned on a pod cast, my normal kitchen entertainment and I heard in my head, “No the blues”. So I turned on a blues play list and started preparing some veggies. I said to myself/#4.” Ok now what?” I started washing some carrots. A few seconds later Etta was singing in my bones as my #4, begging me to love her, to love myself. I was moved to tears and couldn’t catch my breath.
“Trust in me in all you do
Have the faith I have in you
Love will see us through, if only you trust in me
Why don't you, you trust me?”
-Etta James, “Trust in Me”
I have been changed, I now have a direct channel to my #4. I don’t even need the song played anymore, it is in my bones.
T
Wow. WOW. Please publish this whole thing somewhere. It's incredible and epic. THANK YOU!!!
Thank you Ro, that made my morning. It was an Inventure to read yours, to ponder and to write. I really enjoyed the time traveling. My question is did you check out The The?
Great topic! Music from our formative years! I love how you reflected on the difference between what the songs meant to you as a teenager and what Ani meant in her lyrics. And how our memories of things can become distorted over time with different things merging and shifting. Well written ;)
🙏😘
I really enjoyed this post; I've been doing something similar over the past six months.
I, too, stumbled on Ani in my twenties, and her music was a complete revelation. Her audacity astonished and delighted me. She gave me a whole new perspective on what it is to be a female in this world, which opened the door to a freedom and acceptance in/of myself that i desperately needed. Her songs are like dear old friends, so many of them. 'Not a Pretty Girl,' and '32 flavors', and 'Lost Woman Song' and 'Out of Range,' come to mind right away. I can still chant 'Coming Up' word for word with all the proper inflections, and it still gives me chills.
The other musician who really impacted me was Tori Amos. Her music showed me you can paint pictures with words and feelings and even pain, and that has its own beauty. She gave me a voice for the anger and hurt and longing \that i didn't know how to express in my early years. In high school, a friend and i would drive at night for hours and hours, and just sing along to her first album, Little Earthquakes. I remember how cathartic that was, how it felt sacred, like prayer.
I've found that Ani and Tori's songs are still there, have become places inside me. Deeply grateful for these women, and for so many other artists who dared to go after truth and depth in their work.
Thanks for the chance to reflect on, and revisit these things!
This is gorgeous. Thank you. I have the same relationship with Little Earthquakes too. What an incredible album. I'm so glad to know you! <3
It is quite often that I think about Ani and her music. Living in the Washington DC area. Coming into my womanhood… and even today I sit back and think of quotes from her music that acts as a map to where I have said I want to go.
This is SO true for me too, Angie! I love that you said this. It also feels like this lyric:
"To search for the downbeat
In a tabla symphony
To search in the darkness
For someone who looks like me
Though I'm not really who I said I was
Or who I thought I'd be..."
I once drove Ami DiFranco from the airport. That’s my brush with fame!
Lots of Venn diagram crossover for us here 😊
Amy your play list and my playlist overlap. I almost wrote about Depeche Mode, Black Celebration!