The Indie Rock Fag: Right Back Where He Started From
Of all the things one gives up to be in a relationship — loneliness, social freedom, guilt-free farting in bed — the changes I least expected was visited up my music library. As I compile a checklist of domestic benchmarks like cohabitation and dog ownership, last night I took a plunge into life-sharing that was so scary I couldn’t even give it to much thought. I just made the decision, hit the button, and kept large piles of salt around to remind me what happens when a person looks back.
I decided to combine my music library with my boyfriends on one external hardrive. I did not do this as any symbol of unending love, as I refuse to conflate romance and Apple products, but I was sick of having my music split between two computers and wanted to consolodate it. But an unexpected side effect of this was that I have lost all my playlists. Every car trip, every college weekend, every mixtape I labelled with the name of the friend who recieved it have now been retroactively silenced by my desire to move forward.
I know I’m not alone when I say that these collections of songs that I spent so many hours creating represent a collection of memories as palpable and painful as any photo album. That mix I made for a busride to a track meet five years ago also stands a reminder of the first time I kissed a straight guy, and the collection of listenable ELO songs I put together for him a week later represents a painful lesson about why straight guys shouldn’t generally be kissed in the first place. “Summer ’06″ is a perfect callback to the miserable stoner months of uncertainty between college graduation and the rest of my life. And so on. I would hasten a guess that every two weeks of my life has somehow been scrapbooked through a playlist. And now they’re gone.
It’s probably good in a way. The closet of my childhood bedroom is packed with shoeboxes, each represnting a year of my life, where I stored various flotsam of my past like ticket stubs and birthday cards. I haven’t opened one of these boxes since I compiled them four years ago, but there presence is a sort of comforting crutch. I know you can’t reclaim the past, but its fun to keep its remnants in little capsules in case you get the urge to try.
So I guess it’s not the end of the world that I won’t remember the exact set of fifteen songs that I had in my headphones as I wandered around Seattle last month, but it stings a little bit that one tangible reminder of a day passed is now as lost in time as the day itself. Starting over in any capacity is frustrating at best, though it doe contain a little tingle of excitement at the prospect of a blank slate.
Its also a good reminder that I’m more than just the sum of the culture I consume. I lately find my boyfriend and I sitting around and having whole conversations, alone or with friends, that revolve around what concerts we saw and what Adult Swim cartoons we can most thoroughly quote. Jerri Blank allusions have become as common in my house as air trapped in a lady’s region. I don’t even notice them anymore. This separation of music and memory could be a good chance to experience my past without the MTV gloss.
Of course, I give it two weeks tops before I have more new playlists than a schizophrenic DJ. But its pretty to think that I could live otherwise, even briefly.
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