My life in song

It's amazing how quickly a memory of a time in my life or a person can come rushing back on hearing a certain song. For instance, the Sex Pistols "Anarchy in the U.K." epitomizes my senior year of high school and freshman year of college. So does the Violent Femmes "Add it Up."

Then there's "Sugar Magnolia" by the Grateful Dead. I desperately wanted to be someone's Sugar Magnolia, that woman who could do anything and do it well and be gazed at adoringly by her lover.

Summer of 1995--the Dead again--this time "Not Fade Away" and the promise that "Our love will not fade away." Yeah, a guy said that. I was 22 and I fell for it.

Later that same summer, there was Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee," which my best friend and I listened and sang to at the top of our lungs while we drove around town.

Then I moved out and I was all about the Doors and Ani DiFranco. I felt that the lines of "Untouchable Face" which say,

"I see you and I'm so perplexed
What was I thinking?
What will I think of next?
Where can I hide?"

could have been written by me. They weren't, but they echoed in my head a lot, usually after a bad relationship. I still love that song actually. Along with "Out of Habit" and the lines: "My thighs have been involved in many accidents" and "My c*%t is built like a wound that won't heal," which I still sing at the top of my lungs when I listen to it.

Moving on, my ideas about love really have come from songs. Who doesn't listen to a particularly romantic line and think, "Oh, wow"? There was definitely a point in my life when I thought that marriage would be like "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

"And I'd give up forever to touch you,
Cause I know that you feel me somehow.
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be,
And I don't want to go home right now.

And all I can taste is this moment,
And all I can breathe is your life,
And sooner or later it's over,
I just don't want to miss you tonight."

I think my marriage was like that maybe for the first year. I kind of miss that.