Songs of Our Lives
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Songs of Our Lives: Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died”
All around me were strangers. All around me were friends. A dark glittering sea of fists. What a terrible, wonderful thing, to be welcomed into this fellowship at last.
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Songs of Our Lives: Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”
There’s you and him, and you and me. You seem to want each of us all to yourself, and that’s fine; you’re the one we both care about.
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Songs of Our Lives: Stereolab’s “Pause”
“Pause,” like the nostalgia it references, possesses the qualities of ceremony. My ceremony: I played and replayed this song that year, transforming past into present into past over and over.
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Songs of Our Lives: Guns N’ Roses’s “Paradise City”
When people asked what I was going to do after high school, I said, “Leave town.” I wasn’t kidding. I hadn’t applied to a single college.
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Songs of Our Lives: A Certain Ratio’s “All Night Party”
Even the girl busted for drunk driving before she was even old enough to get her license seemed impressed: “You and your parties! You guys are just crazy.”
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Songs of Our Lives: Look Blue Go Purple’s “Circumspect Penelope”
Distance always seduced me—distance from whatever was most familiar, especially myself—but the difficulties in achieving such remove vexed me.
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Songs of Our Lives: Dead Kennedys’ “Chemical Warfare”
I had no idea who Saddam Hussein was—or what band had just made that big, big noise—but I was sure of one thing: I was pissed off.
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Songs of Our Lives: Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat”
Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” begins at four in the morning, an hour usually armed with drunken reverie, but occasionally visited on insomniac nights, leaving you with nothing to do but to send search parties into the shadowed rivers of…
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Songs of Our Lives: The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” and Unrest’s “Teenage Suicide”
I could never imagine that a single spring night in my teenage years would be the best my life would offer me
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Songs of Our Lives: “Angel from Montgomery”
If you chase a song from the tips of its branches down its broad trunk, you’ll eventually hit cold soil and muscular roots. Good songs lead somewhere. They are present and fruitful when you need them.
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SONGS OF OUR LIVES: JOY DIVISION’S “LOVE WILL TEAR US APART”
She drew cartoon sketches of herself. I sent more mix-tapes. Within a few months, in the middle of a five- or six-page letter, she wrote that she loved me.
