Soundtracked

am certainly not a music aficionado, by any means. Believe you me, I cannot carry a tune, and therefore am the most unqualified person to discern the good from the bad. Case in point, I love watching American Idol (top 12 only) but think all of the contestants are amazing and deserve to win. Hence, my music tastes are broad. By that I mean everything from George Strait to Janis Joplin. Bob Marley to Celine Dion. Dolly Parton to Dave Matthews. I've gone through more music phases than Lady Gaga has costumes. What can I say, I like what I like.

This year I've added Keane to my music repertoire, and in a big way. This is the band that will define my later twenties. Three decades from now their music will take me back to this exact moment in life and I'll think about sailing in Belize with my family, BD pedaling his commuter bike, Sunday afternoon naps, and the crazy unexpected adventures we're having with starting our family. Keane is very much the soundtrack to our present. Music has the uncanny ability to transport you to a specific time and place. Fascinating.

There was a time when I would listen only to The Beatles. I took it upon myself to memorize every word to every song on every album. True story. I also went through a Grateful Dead phase, which I'm actually still in. Ahem. Jr. High was an awkward mix of Nirvana (R.I.P. Kurt) and TLC. Come to think of it, Jr. High was just awkward, period. I partly blame Eddie Vedder and flannel for that. Megan Turek had MTV in her basement and we spent countless hours waiting for "Waterfalls" (R.I.P. Left Eye) to come on. Those three girls dancing on top of the water blew our minds. By the time I was in High School I had been baptized by fire with Garth Brooks and country music has had a pretty solid showing ever since. The Dixie Chicks were a staple among my tight little group of girlfriends.

This picture (c. 1999) surfaced the other night during one of my organizational fits. I fought back tears as fond teenage memories came flooding in. All I heard was "Cowboy Take Me Away" blaring through the speakers of the Sigma. More important than the music, I'm grateful to still have my high school girlfriends close by. They taught me everything my 17 year-old self needed to know about drive-by's, ear piercing, tweezing, kissing boys, and skipping school. We've been there for each others' big moments such as marriage and babies and jobs. Not to mention the little moments too, like birthday parties and potty training triumphs and lunch. All of it a far cry from the glory days of high school football games. But if I have learned anything this past year, it's that life throws the unexpected. Bad things happen, people make mistakes, and none of it is supposed to be easy. Turns out, my friends continue to teach me what my 28 year-old self needs to know about the hard knocks of life. Because we all have them. No exceptions. Somehow we find a way to love each other through the good the bad and the ugly. Hmmm, here I was writing a post about music that somehow morphed into something completely different, but all the more relevant to the soundtrack of my life. In true form, I wasn't expecting that.