I’ve got to warn you, this one is going to be intensely personal. So, if you don’t want to know, and I mean, if really don’t want to really know, then I suggest that you go somewhere else. It probably won’t make sense to anyone but me, and I’m probably going to regret writing all of this down. I’m just to write and publish without proofreading this. One draft, check the spelling and pull the trigger.

I just left a party, well not really a party, just a gathering at work. Everything was fine and then the hermit part of my brain kicked in and told me to leave. I fought it for a while, and then this part of my brain kicked in. These ideas have been simmering in my brain for a long time, and for some reason, everything crystalized tonight. My brain started writing this and I just fled. I knew I had to get home home home, I had to get home before I lost it, because I knew, and I know, that if I lose it this time, it will probably never come back.

Right now, Dinosaur Jr’s Without A Sound is playing. This is playing and not something else because this is one of few albums that is just for me. All of the other songs that I know are tied to someone else, and right now, I need to hear something that is just for me. I’ve got to finish this before Seemed Like the Thing to Do comes on, or I’ll never ever finish.

I told Ivan once that every time I hear a song, it reminds me of a person, and conversely, any time I thought of a person, there associated song played in my head. He told me that he thought it was odd that my life was “mediated by music”, as he put it. I think the odd thing, the sad thing, really, is that I can’t tell the story of my life without talking about these songs.

Blake wrote “the singer said something I could only feel”, and while that is true, and goes along way to explain how I got to where I am today, I prefer the thing that Michael wrote, “This one is on the soundtrack ot the story of my life”. He’s my brother, so of course I like his better.

I don’t know if this is odd or not, or exceptional, but what I said to Ivan is the truth. I really can’t think about people without thinking about music. Every memory I have of my life is tied to some song.

My very first memory is walking barefoot with Michael down a sandy road, delivering my Dad’s lunch of bologna sandwiches to him while he was DJ’ing at the local AM radio station.

My second memory of my life is a rainy night, laying in the backseat of my parent’s car with my Michael. My parents were stopped at some parking lot, I think in front of the JC Penny’s near my hometown. I lay quietly in the backseat watching sheets of rain pour down the windshield while listening to Blondie’s The Tide is High.

Every person I know is tied to a song or an album. My father is Dire Straits, my Mom is Reba McEntire; Michael is REM’s Dead Letter Office and also 7 Seconds Walk Together, Rock Together. Vincent is Johnny Klegg and Sivuka. Sebadoh belongs to the first girl who broke my heart and didn’t know it; Wilco’s Box Full of Letters belongs to the first girl who did. Black Box Recorder is the one who got away. Pam is always going to be my Velocity Girl, Mark is always going to be 16 screaming Fugazi’s Waiting Room in the basement of the junior high, and Zac is always going to be Liz Phair’s Chopsticks, dancing in his living room yelling “that way we can fuck and watch TV”.

Alot of people write diaries so that they can forget. I listen to music so that I can remember. In too many cases, the person is gone and their song is the only thing I have left.

I was thinking about “the soundtrack to the story of my life” a few weeks ago, which is how this whole thing starting percolating the first place. I was making Holly a compilation, and it was horrible, so I tossed it. I started anew and decided to make for Holly that soundtrack. In all honesty, I’d been thinking about it for months, but never gotten around to making it because I never had a reason.

I finally had a reason. I think it’s really important for friends to understand one another, and I mean really get how the other person clicks. I have a few friends for whom this is true, and it is partly because we share the same songs. If I just say the word Freakscene to Rebecca, she knows my precise mental state. that counts for something I think.

There is this small, strange part of my brain that had been trying to. . . I don’t know. . . force some understanding through visual osmosis. Like if I looked at Holly fiercely enough, for long enough, that I could force the entire contents of my brain into hers through some sort of telepathic mind meld. Or maybe make our brains switch places. Which, upon further reflection would be the worst sort of punishment that one person could inflict upon another. Most of us have our hands full dealing with the strange currents of our own minds, and I for one know that I couldn’t take on another person’s in addition to my own.

Seemed Like the Thing to Do is on. I’m sunk.

So I did the other thing. I made the compilation. I made the “soundtrack to the story of my life”. I also did another smart thing, which was making myself a copy. The thing is that I can’t listen to it. I get about half-way through and lose it. There is something about hearing my own voice singing back to me that really unnerves me. So now I have this thing that finally tells my story in a way that I never could, and I can’t even listen to the damn thing.

What would Blake say about that?