Yard-Stick Songs

I think one of the most wonderful things about music is that a heap of sound waves can make you feel a certain way. How when you hear a particular song after a long period of time, and now you are feeling a certain feeling related to a certain time and place when you first listened to that song. Or maybe you relate that song to an event when it was playing, or maybe you just interpret the lyrics and they mean a certain thing to you. In the film "Safety Not Guaranteed" Mark Duplass's character echoes a similar sentiment. He says, "You know when you hear your favorite song, it brings you back to that specific time and place when you heard it first." A sort of sonic time traveling if you will. There are some songs that if I hear them randomly I then immediately recall fragments of memory, not enough to put into words, but a memory of real time nonetheless.

  But then I think there's a slightly different thing regarding songs and memory. Every once in a blue moon I sit myself down and listen to certain songs; let's call them yard-stick songs. Yard-stick because I listen to them and try to measure whether I still feel that same way I used to when listening. I might sit and listen to Motion City Soundtrack's "The Future Freaks Me Out" and see if I still love it as much as I did back in middle school and subsequently high school. And I ask myself, does the future still freak me out? Some days, definitely.

Motion City Soundtrack
The Future Freaks Me Out



  "Objects of my Affection"by Peter Bjorn and John is another one. I try to gauge if at wherever I am in my life I agree with the lyrics "I laugh more often now, I cry more often now; I am more me". At this point in my life, at whichever point in my life, do I laugh more than I used to? Cry more than I used to? Am I comfortable as myself?

Peter Bjorn and John
Objects of My Affection