Sounds of Me

After several years of saying I was going to do it, this week I finally started a playlist in my iTunes that I’m calling the soundtrack of my life. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like, except cheesier.

I’m collecting songs from old records my parents used to play, which remind me of childhood. Songs that make me feel like I’m still sitting on the yellow bus on my way to middle school. Songs that I listened to on my very first Walkman (yeah, baby), and the ones that remind me of church camp. Summer vacation. First kisses. Old friends. The cheesy songs we cried over at high school graduation, and one from the first CD I ever owned. Songs from the playlists my brother loaded on my iPod when he gave it to me, which I listened to for six months before I loaded in songs of my own. That kind of thing. My goal is to boil it down to about one or two songs per year of life, and I think it’s going to end up quite interesting. To me, and no one else.

I don’t know what the purpose of gathering these songs really is, except that it’s a fulfillment of a concept I’ve had in my mind for a while. I also don’t know why certain songs, out of the many tunes I’ve heard and enjoyed in my life, stand out in my mind and have the power to carry me back in time so viscerally.

What I do know is, over the years I have changed as much as music technology itself has. I can see in this special history of myself a certain evolution in my thoughts and emotions and the things that stir both. The process is both exciting and self-reflective, and much less of a waste of time than I expected!

What songs—new and old, errr, classic—speak to you, or tell the story of your life?