gloomy sunday

Sunday is gloomy
The hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless

Gloomy is Sunday
is absolutely Gloomy Sunday
Gloomy Sunday
...Sunday

maybe i'm alone on this, but i actually get nervous every time i begin to fall in love with a song. it's the same routine every time-- import it onto my computer, pump up the volume and set it to repeat, plot out the harmony and let it wash over me for a while. then i save it on my ipod and resist the urge to play it for a while-- it's a little secret, hidden away so the butterflies will return the next time.

stashing my favorite songs is always a melancholy experience. i can't help but to think about the future i'll have with the song... when i'll play it, who i'll be when it's playing. it will be playing on friday nights when i'm getting ready to go out, using the mirror in my living room as i put on mascara next to my leg lamp with the 45 watt bulb. it will be playing on long car trips with the windows down, sunglasses on, cup of coffee in the cupholder and a long string of white lines on the asphalt in front of me. it will be playing on long, tedious days that prompt me to leave the bathroom door open, turn up the volume and sing along from the steamy absolution of a shower. and it will be playing when i come home to an empty apartment with an aching heart, curl up in my blue sun afghan and try to fit a hundred thousand racing thoughts in to a year's worth of badly needed clarity.

i haven't abandoned the favorite songs from my past; i still get goosebumps from their haunting, soulful, instrument-swelling performances. but they cross a border of vulnerability when i give them away on a mix cd, play them for a friend on the drive home or listen to them through headphones as i fall asleep on a bruised heart. they are no longer a neutral sanctuary-- they've become inextricably linked with the people in my life and the thoughts in my head, and i know that the memories they've been braided with will play as loudly as the music will... in every chord and every caesura. barber's adagio has become the spring of my junior year, rehearsing it in my quartet with charcoal-covered hands and postmodern paperbacks in my back pocket. bjork's joga is a mix cd from karsten that i played every night of my christmas vacation the year that the world became my oyster. ben folds' jane is lying in my tree bed, trying to fix the key i bent sideways in my frozen car door at matt's house.

it raises an unanswerable question-- is it better to live quietly to protect your heart from getting attached, or is it better to turn up the volume to the soundtrack to your life and risk losing the songs that helped define you?