The best birthday gift I ever received
Tomorrow is my birthday and today I’m thinking back to the best birthday gift I ever received. It wasn’t tied up with a bow, and it wasn’t given once but it again and again until it became a part of me.
Everyone assumes that writing or dance or books were my first love, but they’re wrong, it was music that made swoon first. This gift of musical joy allowed my mind to connect music to every possible aspect of life it could: memories, scents, lighting, seasons, clothing, people, moods, depths that I can’t find words to explain.
I’d say that I grew up surrounded by music, but honestly, most people had music in their life from the beginning so that’s not that special.
But, something extraordinary happened between music and me when I was very young. In fact, I was so young that I'm not sure how I could possibly remember this, but I have the most vivid memory of laying on the floor of my living room around the age of three listening to my parents play their ABBA CD. In that memory, I don’t just hear the lyrics or listen to the groove of the guitars and drums, but I picture the noise and start to compose dreams, and words, and massive thoughts.
Now, whether or not that happened – seeing music has been a part of me since. It's not like I correlate notes to colors, I wish I did, but its more so like the swirls of color that appeared on the screen when you played a song on Limewire back in the early 2000s.
I wouldn’t be the dancer I was without this attachment; this gift I was given. Actually, I don’t think I’d be a lot of things if it weren’t for this.
I was given this by my ancestors, the musicians and writers and free thinkers that came before me. But, accessories were added to this present from nearly everyone I encountered; My grandfather, Freddy Mills, the big band orchestra legend, my brother playing low slung guitar pop punk in our basement and then eventually teaching me Clapton and Hendrix and even Mayer, my mom and her sisters always singing, the early 70’s tunes my dad defended on every car ride, every record store, FYE, Best Buy, iTunes, Limewire, any source to obtain that sweet stuff I couldn’t help but want, and of course coming of age in the prime era of hipsters.
But, that’s enough to say, my relationship with the auditory magic is too hard to capture on the page entirely, and I am not the only one who feels this way. We all have our own relationship, some even deeper than mine, with music. So, I give you my playlist of soul amplifying songs in case you feel the need to rekindle any sparks you may have with the sweet joy that is music.
I painstakingly linked them all for you (I’m sure I’ve missed a million good ones, and for that I apologize, but these are the ones that really make my mind/heart/soul happy off the top of my head).
In no particular order:
1. The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds album
2. Foo Fighters – February Stars/Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace album
3. The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil/Gimme Shelter
4. The Smashing Pumpkins – Galapagos/Siamese Dream album
5. Brian Wilson – Love & Mercy
6. Jimi Hendrix - Hey Joe/All Along the Watchtower
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Dark Necessities/Stadium Arcadium album
8. Maggie Rogers – literally everything
9. Lizzo – Cuz I Love You album
10. Mumford and Suns – There Will Be Time
11. Eric Clapton – Peaches and Diesel
12. Nirvana – literally everything
13. Tom Petty – American Girl
14. George Ezra – Song 6
15. Coldplay – Shiver
16. Noah Gallagher and the High Flying Birds – You Know We Can’t Go Back
17. The Middle East – Blood
18. Band of Horses – Everything All the Time album
19. Arcade Fire – Suburbs album
20. White Hinterland – Icarus
21. The Temper Trap – Conditions album
22. The Lumineers – The Lumineers album
23. Radical Face – We’re On Our Way
24. Ugly Casanova – Things I Don’t Remember
25. The Beatles/Bon Iver/Boston/Chicago/Fleetwood Mac - literally everything (obviously)
Special shoutout to some other artists that have some mad talent – City of the Sun, Holly, Hot 8 Brass Band, grandson, Vista Kicks, Whitney, H.E.R, Tycho, Catfish and the Bottleman, The Evening Attraction, Birdtalker, Cameron Douglas, and Dean Lewis.
