The soundtrack of our lives
ADAM GOLDSTEIN
goldstea@mscd.edu

   Music has always had a visceral impact for me.
All of life’s significant events have their proper soundtracks. All of my most profound and memorable heartbreaks, joys, regrets, defeats, relaxations, journeys and friendships have an accompanying song or, more often, album.
   As I enter the final years of my 20s, I have come to realize that, to quote Cat Stevens, “the first cut is the deepest.” For all the music that has entered my life within the past ten years, the songs and albums that most often recur are the ones I fell in love with when I was young and impressionable.
   As a favorite film or book from childhood resonates through the years, so does a piece of music. I was an avid audiophile from an early age, so the most distinct and durable music is in the conceptual form of an album.
   These are no mere childhood fancies, however, as age and experience have only added to the listening experience. As I become older and, hopefully, wiser, the albums that were so central to my primal development ring more deeply and reveal more truth.
   As a toddler, my father’s Volvo would often ring with the sounds of Fleetwod Mac’s Rumours.    The album was a constant soundtrack to my journeys to school and beyond, and every note became fixed in my memory. I even adopted my father’s distaste for one song, “Oh Daddy.” I would often imitate my paternal hero, tapping my feet and drumming along to the tunes on the dashboard.    These were among my first favorite songs. As I made the awkward transition into my teens, I dismissed Rumours as a musical trifle. For me, it was the equivalent of a Raffi album, in its association and place in my past. Recently, I bought the album on CD, and as “Secondhand News” and “I Don’t    Want to Know” rang, I marveled at the consistency of the music and accessibility of the lyrics. A line like, “Now you tell me that I’m crazy; It’s nothing that I didn’t know,” was lost on my undeveloped, pre-relationship mind. I’d never acted the obsessive fool and called an ex-girlfriend when I shouldn’t have. Hearing those songs now, I still tap into my inner child as I tap my feet and drum on the dashboard, but now the enjoyment is deeper; it’s pulled from my own heartaches, mistakes and lessons.
   Paul Simon’s first solo album, titled simply Paul Simon, was one of my first solo musical discoveries. At 12, I often rifled through my own parents’ and my friends’ parents’ record racks, on the lookout for interesting designs. Paul Simon was a revelation; its frenetic acoustic guitar work and stark words were nothing like of the syrupy and clichéd Simon and Garfunkel songs I’d heard. I was inspired to learn guitar, to drown myself in the songs’ structures, to commit the words to memory. The task continues, and even though I’ve learned many of the songs on guitar, there is still a mystery to the record that grows with each listen. Songs such as “Peace Like a River,” “Duncan” and “Papa    Hobo” retain that initial impact, that amazement and admiration.
   Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks is the album that I most closely associate with heartache and futile love. For every failed crush I had in high school, for every object of affection that returned my advances with the dreaded, “You’re a great guy, but…”, Blood on the Tracks had its own palliative.    As I grew older and my affections grew more serious, the songs became more robust in their pertinence.
   A recent breakup made me pull the record from the racks again, and every song seemed specifically destined for my current situation. On “Buckets of Rain,” these lines struck like an anvil: “I’ve been meek and hard like an oak / I’ve seen pretty people disappear like smoke / Friends will arrive, friends will disappear / If you want me, honey baby I’ll be here.”
   I am sure that these albums will offer more sympathy, more support and more solidarity as life throws more curve balls. My ravenous musical appetite will always seek new songs, new albums and new artists. Still, these are the constants. These are the artistic comforts I will always seek when I’ve been upended by life’s sorrows. Like a parent’s homemade meal or a security blanket from infancy, these are the cultural comforts that time cannot distill.