I will continue on.

I have been thinking a lot about my high school years (and even a few musings on middle school). It is a side-effect of music.

Since I have been keeping up a music blog, I've been going through my music library every day looking for songs to share. Yes, I listen to a lot of new music and I love discovering new bands (I follow about a dozen, proper indie music blogs, I check Pitchfork and sift through HypeMachine every day). But on my own little music blog, that I really treat as one long playlist, I find myself only posting songs that I really love. And I've noticed that about 75% of my music that falls into the 'really love' category is from my high school and middle school years.

I know they say that smell is the sense most closely related to memory. But I think music is an even stronger link to our pasts. I hear the opening chords of Neutral Milk Hotel's album In the Aeroplane over the Sea and I am transported back to the winter of seventh grade - I remember exactly how I discovered the album. Neutral Milk Hotel, Death Cab for Cutie, The Shins, The Decemberists, Elliott Smith, Ben Folds, Pedro the Lion. Those bands were my solid foundation of indie music, all discovered in middle school. A song from Chutes Too Narrow or Castaways and Cutouts or Control or Figure 8 or Songs for Silverman comes up on shuffle and I am immediately an awkward, nerdy middle-school girl.

The music from high school is just as powerful - The Avett Brothers, Iron & Wine, Belle & Sebastian, Spoon, Jason Mraz, Regina Spektor, The Mountain Goats, Sufjan Stevens, The Hush Sound, Tegan & Sara.

Music from senior year - Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver, Laura Marling, Dan Deacon, Ra Ra Riot  - and the summer after graduation - Dirty Projectors, Good Old War, Passion Pit, woodpigeon, Florence & the Machine, Phoenix, The XX - is the most potent.


So I thought I would do a playlist of memories for today's post*.

1. Bend to Squares - Death Cab for Cutie
Listening to this album almost every day after school in 7th grade when I was home alone with new puppies Birdie and Goosie.
2. Young Pilgrims - The Shins
Writing my first awful awful awful novel at the old desktop computer when I was 14, minimising the Word document whenever anyone walked in the room
3. Landed - Ben Folds
Packing up my grandmother's house in Long Island summer after 8th grade, sleeping in my mother's childhood bedroom, finishing Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the sound of the trains going by on the Long Island Rail Road
4. We Intertwined - The Hush Sound
Waking up at 6am sophomore year of high school to wait in line for Gym Meet tickets
5. Canonball - Damien Rice
Crying in the DMV on the day I got my driver's license...
6. Frozen - Tegan & Sara
Stopping for the cows to cross the road while driving to school junior year, I went through a serious T&S phase junior year of high school
7. Jenny - The Mountain Goats
In the Blockbuster parking lot with Jocie on a summer evening and introducing her to the greatness of John Darnielle
8. Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend
Driving down country roads (mostly to Jocie's house) the summer before senior year - I listened to this album every time I drove anywhere that summer
9. Be OK - Ingrid Michaelson
Eating chocolate chip pancakes at Jocie's house and dancing around her living room
10. Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Driving home with Johnny and his friends from a party in high school, a car full of boys, feeling scared and exhilarated because they drove too fast but loving every second of being young and rebellious
11. Can You Tell - Ra Ra Riot
Driving to Syracuse with Jocie to visit the campus for the first time after being accepted in the spring of senior year
12. Sleepyhead - Passion Pit
Parties the summer after high school with Johnny's crew - hot summer nights, smoking my first cigarettes, the freedom of being 18 with no curfew, my first experiences with drugs
13. Skinny Love - Bon Iver
About a hundred memories with this song - stopping in the reservoir on the way home from school one winter's afternoon in senior year - losing my virginity a week after graduation - slow dancing with a boy alone in his room the first week of college - smoke breaks in the snow outside Day Hall, my freshman dorm 
14. Falling Awake - Gary Jules
Crying alone outside the dorm at midnight when Johnny was in the hospital, freezing because it was February in Syracuse
15. When My Time Comes - Dawes
Riding the bus to classes through the blizzard of December 2010 in Syracuse, the bus full of students going to morning classes, everyone bundled in big North Face parkas
16. Fool - Cat Power
Driving to my shrink every Wednesday night, depressed and scared, stopping at Wegmans on the way back for gummy bears
17. Said and Done - Jeff Pianski
Right now and the past month, alone in Oxford after Tom broke up with me






*This playlist doesn't include all of my favourite songs or even the songs that are most meaningful to me. These are just songs that come with a very specific memory attached.