The Climb: Raglan Road by Luke Kelly

At this point, it’s another climb, so you’re okay with it.

The first time that you ever had to climb the hill, wow, that was really tough. It was back when summer blanketed the world with temperatures of ease and normalcy. When 70 degrees was cherished. But man, that hill. You didn’t want to go over it alone. So you didn’t, but people told you to not be afraid of going over it alone. But you were still wary. Because every day? You were supposed to go over this every day?

Ah, but you grew up where bravery was contagious. Where adventure was a treasure to be won because you were looking to find the challenges that would enhance you. That first time you went over the hill by yourself, oh gosh, look at you go! It was such a relief. You could do it. You could trust yourself to push yourself over it.

There were some days where your mind just didn’t let you go there. You had to take the long way so you didn’t have to shorten your breath or think about the strain of doing it. Not everyone thinks like this. This fastidious attention to detail. But there are many that do, so you knew you weren’t alone.

There were days where it was so hard. So hard to just push yourself. To just keep going. Why didn’t everyone just understand that just being this way was sometimes difficult? You weren’t trying to act against anyone, it’s just that sometimes you felt like you were putting extra weight on your shoulders. And you still had to do the climb.

The climb started to numb you, though, and you didn’t even mind after awhile. It was quicker to walk over the hill so you were going to do it anyway.

And then you were invigorated by the hill. Every day you exerted yourself. Every day you tried, even if at the very base of it all it was just climbing a nasty hill.

And maybe you made mistakes. Maybe there were things you shouldn’t have done or maybe there were people who didn’t love you back the way you did. Maybe you took awhile to find your footing. But you loved. You loved and loved and loved and loved and when it wasn’t people, it was at least art. It was at least nature and beauty.

The best was when you were at the top and looked all around and saw the world’s pockets of houses and miniature trees. Where you looked at the Dome the same way you did when you first got there. A look-out point you could experience every day.

There are times where you can worry about the little things. Then there are times where the weightier ideas creep into your everyday thinking process. It’s in these periods of your life where you can’t just assume someone’s going to make it go away. A tissue in the bathroom during class – it’ll help. But you can’t be a kid anymore. You have to help. Or at least do your part.

So you keep going up and down, up and down, up and down. When there are other things in the world, one hill isn’t going to stop you. In fact, it’ll define you. And your strength will only increase.

Because you keep having energy. You keep having persistence. You keep going.

The year of the anthem: “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)” by Stevie Wonder

During the first semester of my sophomore year, I took a class called “Race and Gender in Pop Music.” Fortunately for me, this didn’t simply just mean pop music, but also extended into the breadth of rock and roll. I loved it.

One day, our professor gave us this task at the end of class:

“Next time we meet, I want you to think of what your anthem is – like a song that really represents you.”

And she gave us a week to think.

By next class, I hadn’t thought of a song – I couldn’t choose. I told the class “White Flag” by Dido was my anthem because it was the first song that I felt like I ever “got into.” After that song, I became a Dido fan and that’s how I became the music-geeky person you know today.

Since then, I always liked pondering about what my anthem was as sort of a thought to get entranced by whenever I was daydreaming. Would it be “Thunder Road” by the Boss? Would it be “Falling Slowly” after all of those times that I watched Once? For awhile, I thought it was “England” by the National, but I believe that “England” is my favorite song. That is different from an anthem.

Two years later, this year, I created my anthem.

I first listened to this particular song after I watched High Fidelity for the first time. For a long time, the song always had this sort of romantic connotation to it. I mean, if a young John Cusack made a mixtape for me and this was on there, who wouldn’t be smitten?

I had always really liked Stevie Wonder growing up, but his music was always in the background for me. I don’t know if I would even really consider myself an official fan either – I’ve hardly gone through his discography. However, I was always, at the very least, a casual fan because I always loved playing the Stevie Wonder trumpet parts in band.

“Sir Duke” was always so much fun to play and I’m pretty sure I started playing “Superstition” when I was a freshman in high school. I’m particularly fond of “Sir Duke” because the first time I listened to it was in the car while I was waiting for my mom to pick my sister up from a friend’s house. I, unsurprisingly, was hiding from social interaction and listening to music. This… song came on, and it was so optimistic and upbeat and happy and I had to dance. I had no way of telling what the song was (it was before the days of Shazam), but I didn’t care and just simply danced. I knew that the song would come back into my life again. And it did.

But it was High Fidelity and this power of such emotion that seriously drew me into his music. It played to the melodramatic entertainer in me. Oh, reveling in such vocal prowess! I started listening to more of his stuff and got more interested in other soul and funk artists as well.

It was this year when “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)” became my anthem.

It was first when I was starting to finally feel better about everything in LA. I had been able to get back into the swing of driving after my accident and I was being a lot more cautious. I was starting to be less mousey and anxious at with the people I was meeting and thinking of myself with the mindset that yes, maybe this isn’t a fluke that I’m here.

Cognitively, I was in a better place.

I liked the routine that I established. While I still was dealing with my anxiousness, I could find periods of happiness that were becoming less of pockets of time and more breadths of stability. I didn’t automatically expect upheaval – things could be normal and I would be all right with that. I was getting to know people better and was happy with the wonderful closeness that I was developing with new friends.

Amoeba Music was part of that routine. It was quick to drive there from the apartment and if I didn’t have much homework or if I was done, why not go? Why not just walk among all of that music, all of that history, all of that sound? The life of the place boosted me whenever I walked in and it felt like home.

One day, perusing the CDs, I found the High Fidelity soundtrack. I always loved the music in the film and it made me think of Chicago. Despite feeling more comfortable in this new city, I couldn’t wait to be home again. The bridges, the river, the lake. So, of course, I was going to buy the album.

Driving back, there was a moment in the car while listening to “I Believe” where I finally let go.

I can be really hard on myself. It’s annoying to my friends, family and myself. Not so much because we’re all heartless. It’s because we all know that I don’t need to be like that to myself and that it’s debilitating to always hear about my self-criticisms. My self-deprecations. A spiraling sense of drama of something that doesn’t exist but something that I feel.

When the semester started, I went into LA a little physically heavier than I’ve been that the last few years. Not extremely noticeable to other people, but because I used to weigh even heavier, I’m very vigilant about the way my body feels. I remember packing for the LA semester and crying because I kept trying on all the clothes that used to fit me just three months before. I couldn’t even pretend to button some buttons or make some zippers work.

With that, I went to LA with a critical look on myself. This reflected in how I interacted with people. It was like how I used to be in high school – I was more subordinate, quieter, timid, less confident. Certainly not the pub-strutting version of myself that I grew into while I was in London. The previous semester was also different because I was going into London with a better sense of self-worth. LA, I was already feeling like I was tired of dealing with my problems.

When you have a negative mindset about yourself, it makes your way of interpreting events more difficult. You tend to pick out the bad in situations a lot more easily. I let my feelings of discomfort rule my head at times. Reaching back to the past – calling home, reaching out to friends that I missed at school and from home – was a coping mechanism. It was sometimes healthy, but sometimes it was excessive and took me away from the present.

Despite this, I had traveled too much to let a city rest on its own without me. I felt best when I explored.

My screenwriting professors at the end of each class would always tell us to “Keep going.” I’d think about that whenever I had to drive places or do tasks at work that I had no experience with beforehand.

I started to work out more and I ate well considering there was a gym in the apartment complex and that there were eighty thousand grocery stores within a five-mile radius.

It was the routine.

It was working hard.

Knowing how to do those two things makes me feel like I’m on track even when I’m having a moment where I’m being hyper self-conscious. In the corner of my mind, even though I was overwhelmed, I knew that if I worked on focusing on those two things, I would feel better.

Once some of the initial anxiousness ebbed, I loved being in the moment of working. I was able to enjoy myself more during class and I certainly loved studying at my favorite coffee shop. I was beginning to allow myself to feel happy because I knew that I deserved to at least give that to myself.

So it was that moment, in the car, listening to “I Believe,” when that feeling truly settled.

And I realized that it wasn’t a love song.

Relationships and romance can be incredibly stressful. Of all things, it is very easy to get caught up in the minutia with those experiences. It’s not until later when you think to yourself, “That didn’t work, but I feel wonderful that at one point in time, someone felt that close to me.”

When you do finally take it in, it just makes you feel good that you were that good to yourself and that someone else noticed. And it’s not like you even were trying to be anything, you were just feeling so good about doing your own thing and that made another person, even with their own walk of life, be drawn into you.

That’s self-worth. That’s confidence.

It was with that mindset when I was listening to “I Believe” when I realized it wasn’t a love song but a song about overcoming those feelings of self-doubt and being above tormenting yourself emotionally. Why are you doing that to yourself? You don’t need to do that.

You have so much and so much to offer.

When Stevie sings “I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever” I saw it in a different perspective – it wasn’t to anyone specific. It was the fact that one day, you will find someone who will love you.

And you’re always knowing of break-ups and divorces and all of that. But that hope is so powerful, that optimism is so uplifting. Because we do live in a world of break-ups and divorces, so why not put yourself out there because then you’ve at least tried. And you’ll meet people and some of those people will still be in your lives; they’ll just take a different shape. And at very least, why not feel let yourself feel good to believe in that hope?

Apart from relationships, why not put yourself out there in the world? The world is a cold and hard place but that’s why people are so grateful to find all the good that’s in the world. That’s how people get over crippling diseases and traumatic events and feeling depressed because thank God for the things that makes you feel good.

It was that moment where I started belting along with the song. Like comically.

You know what moment I’m talking about. When he’s saying that “God answer my prayer.”

I grew up in a church that was so wonderful to me but to be honest, my religious views are murky right now. But I felt so relieved to know that I would be able to allow myself to let go of my self-criticism, that I wouldn’t always be so trapped in my mind, so I sang along.

Despite the beautiful revelation that I had, of snapping myself to as I pulled into the parking garage, despite returning to that song in a new light up until the plane ride home, I thought that it was as simple as that. That I would never allow myself feel bad again because I had already learned my lesson.

Your mind moves with you no matter where you go.

I was very content and solid this summer. I had a fantastic internship that I loved. I was video editing again, and, oh my goodness, I missed it so much after a year. I didn’t even realize how much I missed it. But being someone that is fastidious about the correct placement of things (not my clothes in my room, rather the posters on my wall), editing is a grand sense of relief. That eagerness to create and edit is all right there on the timeline.

I was feeling content. I was feeling solid.

I allowed myself to forget that it was temporary.

There was one night in the summer where “I Believe” was a blast of reality. I didn’t listen to it with the right mindset.

I had just had an absolutely wonderful time in the city with a friend that I had met up with at a coffee shop. I had a great day at work and I had plenty of time to make the train at Union Station. I walked along Wacker Drive with the sunset glimmering on the river, walking next to the bridge that Rob Gordon milled around on when he was contemplating on his love with Laura. I let the dialogue from the film flitter around in my brain, switching back and forth from pretending to be Rob and imagining what it’d be like to be loved by Rob, to be his Laura. The buildings, beige with the glow of the lampposts, looked like river facades of Amsterdam. The L car routinely rattled on auburn tracks as I passed underneath its bridge. I kept walking, feeling as if I was stepping into a perfect moment. Or maybe that was just the caffeine kicking in.

I had reached the archways of the Lyric Opera, the lights hanging, illuminating the sidewalk below. The beautiful, grandiose buildings across the street created a cubism portrait of the skyline in front of it.

What a perfect place, I thought, thinking of how a city, once again, made me feel at home, no stressors in any part of my mind. I want to spend an eternity here. I want to find love here.

The song had swelled to when Stevie was singing about prayers. I crossed the street and looked down, the road and the future suddenly seeming so long, so vast, like when you stare at a diagram of our solar system for too long.

This is all just temporary.

A nasty feeling crept up from my stomach to my brain. The freeing feeling, the summer, this moment – that’s all it was, just a moment. And it was going to go away. One day soon, I would be back in a place that I had left behind. I had left people behind.

And my mind menaced me.

The rest of the train ride home I sat shaking, listening to nothing, watching people walk up and down the aisle. I told myself that it was because I drank too much coffee.

I didn’t listen to the song for awhile. In fact, for a variety of reasons, it really hurt to listen to it. I became afraid of my own anthem because I was allowing myself to dwell. I was allowing those negative thoughts to come back.

Especially when I went to back school.

Seeing people that you befriend nearly two years prior and then expecting to have the same friendship again is like having drunk goggles on. You’re pretty sure you know what you’re doing, but every now and then things get a bit wobbly. I fortunately did have a lot of good people that I relied on, at school and at home and other places where I had met people.

But I had changed. And it’s not like they were going to know exactly how.

I had reset the cognitive clock and I was the early-February version of myself again. Unsure and nervous. This time, I had been in Syracuse before, but everywhere I walked, I remembered so vividly what it was like to walk next to those beautiful beige river facades, those glowing lampposts. I had become petty about looking at trees instead of skyscrapers.

I worried that I had become ungrateful. I was acting spoiled in some respects, but I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity instead of acting against my neurotic tendencies. My high school habits were easy to rely on because they were that – easy.

To be honest, I still at times revert back to that sort of thought process. That wariness, that search for the negative. Creating scapegoats, crying for no reason. When I was in LA, I thought it was all going to go away but I hadn’t allowed myself to admit to myself that I am harder work than that. I’m smarter than that. I’m so smart that I can manage to trick myself thrice times over.

But you know what does help? Learning to own it.

I am very intelligent and I have always considered that my greatest strength. That is always what I rely on, which is why I am at such ease when I work, when I create. In a way, I have made myself so strong that even though I could be pulling myself up from some dark emotional hole that I dug for myself, there is no way in Hell where I am going to give up on what I am working on, what I am working for. At my center, at my core, is perseverance and diligence. Even if I can’t always reflect that emotionally, I will always reflect that in what I do with my productivity.

I thought that I would be a better person if I were less of a control-freak with my own mind instead of accepting who I am. Because even if I am allowing my mind to branch off in a thousand tiny spindles, at least I know who I am, truly. And that takes courage.

I got this feeling in my gut when I began to listen to “I Believe” again.

I was walking up the monstrosity of the hill that I have to climb each day to get to class. It was the second to last week of school. I was preparing to go into finals mode and my brain began to compartmentalize the hours in the day, the techniques and tools that I needed to use for each final or project that I had to turn in. My mind was at its most productive and I was feeling vibrant.

I was walking up the hill and seeing my breath in front of me and dared to listen to the song again. Instead of being bombarded with nostalgia, I remembered what I felt in the car, belting, and used that to push me up. Lift me up into that feeling of power, that feeling of surety. This semester was an emotional rollercoaster but by God, at least I was going to destroy my finals. And I did.

So here I am, on the cusp of a New Year, as we all are. There are many, many people who have felt the things that I have felt, have been on the roads that I have had to cross. It’s just taken me until now to join the variety of collective experiences, the good and the not-as-fun, shall we say.

I’m going to graduate this upcoming year, as many of my friends and my peers will do as well. We’ll be searching for something, be it a job or a home or a network. Or something simpler, like truth. Or grander, like the world. And as we do, every now and then, it’s nice to drive around, listen to Stevie Wonder, and just let it all out.

Because in the end, it’s okay.

Falling asleep to waking up: In Rolling Waves by The Naked and Famous

Insomniacs have a tendency to let their head fill up with thoughts and memories and worries. Whenever my introspection is excessive, I combat it by filling my head with music.

These albums have a special place in my heart. While I’ve always dealt with the difficulty of falling asleep at night, whenever my insomnia is worse it’s because I’m dealing with change or stressful environments or even just feeling self-conscious. These are the albums that relax me to the point of serenity. These albums are able to take away the buzz of my mind and allow myself to just relax. Just relax and listen.

Sometimes, though, when an album can help you get through something, it can be lodged with that feeling for a long… long time. So your once saving grace becomes an uncomfortable reminder of the stress that you had to get over.

With these sorts of things, it’s best to just let those songs lay dormant in your music play-through. Those songs won’t show up for awhile and, even though you got so used to having it be part of your every day life, you’ll learn to be okay with it.

Some of these nighttime albums have become this, some of them not. Some of them are just calming and nice to listen to while I sleep. Some of them I listened to so I could fall asleep.

With In Rolling Waves, it was a little bit of both.

I didn’t use it to fall asleep often, but boy, did it calm me down. I attribute this to the first time that I ever listened to the album the first time, which was last year when I was in London.

I had been extremely excited for the album ever since the band released “Hearts Like Ours” during the summer. Its energy was infectious, a perfect compliment to my experience in the East Village. I couldn’t wait to listen to the catchy synth ballads that were to come.

Months passed and I moved back home for two weeks from the city and then to London. My life became exciting and full of opportunity and fulfillment but also filled with uncertainty and distance from family and stressors that I had never accounted for before. Things that I was always just used to kept becoming more and more different. I kept a smile as much as I could but sometimes the stress was debilitating. I could feel myself wanting to make sure that I was doing things perfectly, that I wasn’t making wrong choices. I was trying to do everything and I wanted to be good to everyone.

After walking through Covent Garden with my friend, we happened upon a fantastic media shop with a focus on CDs. And there it was – I had forgotten about the release date but it just so happened that In Rolling Waves had come out the day before. I dropped the quid on the album and downloaded it into my computer as quickly as I could. My iPod synced, the album was ready for me.

I waited to listen to it.

“Hearts Like Ours” wasn’t just any other song and I knew that this wouldn’t just be any other album for me. I had to treat the music with respect and wait for the perfect setting to listen to it in.

Deep in the late hours of the night, I shut off my computer and laid down. The window was open in my tiny room and the breeze fluttered in. It was still relatively pleasant outside, so the air billowed into the room, making everything feel so fresh.

I put on my headphones and I started.

“A Stillness” buzzed into being and I was wrapped up in the sound already. I loved the dreamy quality of the song, the little build-ups and fade downs. And of course, the crescendo into the release of sound near the end of the song was the perfect emotional transition into “Hearts Like Ours.”

I had never listened to the album before, but I could already feel myself nodding off. It’s one of those special things where you know something is so right when right away it just works so well. I was so used to manicuring my listening pattern before falling asleep but here I was, dozing to “Waltz.”

“Rolling Waves” was the definitive song of my trance. It felt like waves crashing on the beach. It was such a peaceful discovery of a song. The waves of sound pushing and pulling like the tide pulling me into sleep. The lyrics itself were about sleep and it just fit so well with the quietude of the night.

I went deeper and deeper into the beginnings of sleep and didn’t even realize I had listened to “The Mess.”

“Grow Old,” however, was a different story.

Again, it starts small and muted and like a story in the background. It’s a song to easily underestimate.

The climax, however. The one that comes at 3:05. It ripped me into hyper-awareness. I gasped as the guitars and keyboard and vocals came crashing together, everything exploding. I felt like it was such an example for how I had been feeling those past couple of months. That I was dealing with a lot of different things but that it was going to be okay because I could at least feel myself express myself through the music. It was okay that I was growing up and that I was changing.

And then the song ended just like how it began. Just a voice, small and dialed down.

The mental effort that took to listen to that song is why I fell asleep for the rest of the album play-through. Normally I would have chastised myself, but I didn’t mind. It was one of the best listening experiences of my life and that feeling still is so vivid in my mind.

So much so that I felt it a few days ago, completely mirrored with my first time listening through. It took a long time before that could happen again.

That album became a staple of my London experience and helped me be able to settle in a place that was a country different from my own. It helped me learn how to navigate new places and people and experiences.

But because it was such an emotional album for me, I had to take a break from listening to it.

I never had bad memories associated with any of the songs, but the songs became a vehicle for emotional release. I didn’t want to over do it, I wanted to still enjoy the songs for the sake of enjoying the songs. I had to find other things to listen to, which I did.

Throughout the rest of the year, I’d perhaps listen to “Hearts Like Ours” or “Rolling Waves” from time to time. Never “Grow Old.”

But the album would pop up in conversation from time to time. I kept thinking about it and how it had such calming qualities.

Coming into senior year so far has been an exciting and wonderful but extremely surreal experience. Again, change. I have to take extra measures for myself to process change just because I know I feel it so fully.

So I listened to the album again. I didn’t even mean to recreate the first time that I listened to it. I just was lying in bed and it was nighttime and there was this summery breeze coming in through the window. I felt at peace and that feeling of dreamy tranquility came back to me. I felt like I was in two times at once. The wonderful thing, though, is that this time I wasn’t using the songs as an emotional release. I was listening with fresh ears and enjoying the music for how it was. The memories of those songs just made the music even more powerful.

I didn’t finish the album, but this time purposefully. Not soon after, I fell asleep, thinking of the waves of the Thames, but also thinking about how I could listen to those songs now in new places. How they could grow into new parts of my life.

Personal Legend Playlist: Songs found while traveling the world

Personal Legend – Definitive List (Spotify playlist)

There is also the Personal Legend – Memory Bank playlist that is an ongoing list of songs that I listened to throughout the year as I remember them.

~

This past spring, I started reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, the story of a young shepherd who leaves everything in his life behind to go on a quest- or his “Personal Legend,” as a magical king he meets calls it – to find his treasure at the Pyramids.

I guess that’s why I haven’t wanted to finish it. I don’t want my own quest around the world to be over.

I’d like to blame the fact that I haven’t finished reading on being busy. You know, I could say things like, “When you’re past the furthest reaches of your world it’s a little difficult to remember to do little things like that. Read books. Watch TV shows. Keep up with a blog.”

But it’s something more than that. It’s the fact that I don’t like endings.

This past year, I lived in New York City, London and LA. I had been to all of these different places before, but I had never lived in any of them before. And I certainly had never lived in a metropolitan setting before.

My whole life, I had always wanted to do two things: travel and live in a city. When I actually took the initiative to make it happen, everything changed. No question about it. Maybe there are things I recognized in each of these places, but in the beginning my head was swimming in the newness and discovery. It was enthralling and at times overwhelming. I always had a wonderful support system of friends and family from home, school and each place that I lived in (shout out to all of you lovely people). Sometimes it’s still hard, though, just because there are some situations that are just tough to deal with whether it’s something as bad as a car accident or something as great but stressful as traveling across Europe.

Through my travels I always had my music. Music, which has always helped me through times of change and discovery and wonder and elation and confusion and hurt and despair, became even more important in this year of hopping from place to place to place. Music was one of my constants. Music grounded me, but also it enhanced the discovery.

My mind expanded along with each new path I took. After going to as many places as I could, and as weird as it may sound, the world feels like it’s in my head. The vastness lives in my mind through memories.

All of this is a lot to process before, during and after. Especially if you want to write about it.

Something that I’ve realized since being home is that coming back is just as much part of travel as is the actually act of traveling. You’re back but in such a different way. You can sit down and realize that while you were traversing in that ether of extraordinary living, you did things beyond your imagination. You met people who did more than just inspire you; they guided and shaped your experiences. You became the adventurer you always wanted to be.

I lived the fantastic and the impossible. And it feels amazing.

So maybe this particular adventure is done. But that just means there’s going to be a new one. This summer I have an internship and I get to be at home, a place I’ve barely been in for over two years. Next year is my last year at school. I need to be ready for it.

Sometimes you have to let the dust settle after you’ve run a marathon. Sometimes you need to breathe a little. Sometimes you need to take it piece by piece.

Sometimes to move forward you have to reflect. The good, the bad, the ugly – the whole adventure. You must look back and look at it straight on or else you’ll just always be checking what’s behind you instead of looking ahead. Or, more importantly, living in the now.

So I’m going to reflect in the way I know how – by making a playlist. Songs are really just memories with melodies.

Here are some of the memories of my life in New York, London and LA.

 

1. Hearts Like Ours – The Naked And Famous

In my mind, this will always be the New York song. My commute from where I lived in East Village to work was a ten-minute walk (and I had no inkling of how good I had it). As I walked to Fifth Ave every day, I would pass through Union Square. My favorite days were when it was sunny and warm and the farmer’s market was set up. The vivid sights and smells passed by as I walked through the vendors. From there, I would cross the street and walk down to Fifth Ave, turn left, and there it was: the Empire State Building. Every day.  My dream realized, the grandness all around me, as I would walk to work I would look up at the tall buildings and look at the shops and restaurants in awe while listening to this song.

If I could, I would put the entire In Rolling Waves album in this playlist just because that particular album really has stuck with me throughout the whole journey. Rolling Waves is especially distinctly attached to my memory of walking over the Millennium Bridge in London. I had some time after class to relax so I looked at the Thames. What a relaxing, peaceful sight. The river flowing past and the sun setting on the bridges before me. It was so healing to watch and to listen to the song. My existence didn’t matter, just the waves and the light.

One other Naked and Famous song that sticks out to me is also Girls Like You, a song I had started listening to when I ran at school. I don’t know if this was the particular song I was listening to, but I’m pretty sure this is what I listened to when I sprained my ankle. How rewarding, then, two months later running through the Narnia-esque Central Park, ankle healed, and I was on top of my world.

2. Don’t Swallow The Cap – The National

As shiny as the inspiration felt, something I didn’t expect was the murkiness of change and facing difficult situations. Moving is a form of uprooting yourself and I was planted in a foreign environment.

A friend and I saw the National perform in Barclays Center and it was a fantastic set. The encore was the most powerful moment when they performed Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks; the band did it as an acoustic piece and the entire stadium sang along. One giant chorus.

After the performance, Trouble Will Find Me became an album on repeat for the rest of the summer. Don’t Swallow The Cap was the song that would float around in my mind as I laid in bed at night, watching the stream of light peeking through the blinds from the honking taxis and storefronts that sold pizza past midnight. One individual in a sea of people.

3. New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down – LCD Soundsystem

As much as I loved New York, there were things about it that really, really sucked. I hated the feeling that I could never be alone. And boy, I am someone who just sometimes needs to be alone. I’m already quirky enough as it is. If I don’t have that time to recharge without people constantly looking at me, then my self-consciousness and sensitivity are only heightened. People can sometimes not understand how I’m acting, and I’m not much of a help because I don’t really know what I’m doing ether.

But it’s a sort of sickness, you know? To be drawn to be something that isn’t good for you. The over-crowdedness, the haphazard sleeping, the overstimulation, the aloneness in a sea of people. These are all things that I shouldn’t be drawn to, but I am. I have a taste for the daring, for the challenging. It is foolish, though, to mistake characteristics of a place as challenge to change. This was something I had to confront while living in the supposed “city of my dreams.”

4. Gravitas – Little People

In contrast to the overwhelming clutter of movie bodies on the sidewalk, whenever I listened to Gravitas I could feel the rhythm of the city. The mass amounts of people instead invigorated me, not suffocate me.

There is such a wonderful texture of life in New York City – I can’t think of a place that I have been to in the country that is more diverse. People from all over the world and from all different backgrounds. It’s amazing to think how we come and go in each other’s lives. In my mind I like to visualize it like strings. Each string is individual, but once the two meet either it can be a knot if it is a short encounter, say meeting a musician on a metro car, or the strings can become intertwined, no matter how far away each string started.

And I’d be passing by these people of the world everyday. My favorite place to think about this would be in front of the Flatiron Building, sitting next to the cafe. I’d have a book that was bought from the Strand and I’d be watching people enter and exit Madison Square Park, riding their bikes and weaving through the taxis. So many people that I’d never see again or I would and not know. So many people with their own worlds. And then I’d open my book and be entrenched in my own world.

5. Dreams – Passion Pit

One of my favorite movies growing up was You’ve Got Mail, so I had a sense of obligation to listen to Dreams at least once every week while living in New York.

I listened to the original a few times, but my heart was always set on Passion Pit’s cover of the song. It felt relevant to me, like it was from my generation. (Really, I just wanted to flatter myself in thinking that I was this generation’s Meg Ryan).

Through all the ups and downs of living in East Village, I always really liked the feeling of living in New York. That I could say that, even if it was for a summer. I know it’s really dorky of me to have such exuberance, but when has that ever stopped me?

Because, through ups and downs, I still have memories of going to the Daily Show. Of walking through the best bookstore in the world every day and writing scripts at the coffee shops nearby. Of watching the fireworks. Of seeing a free show at Central Park. Of the dazzling buildings above and that I lived and worked in them like everyone else.

6. Loaded – Primal Scream

“Just what is it that you want to do?”

“Well, we want to be free. We wanna be free to… to do what we want to do. And we want to get loaded and have a good time. And that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have a good time. We’re gonna have a party.”

No opening to a song could better describe the period of time that was between the months of September 2013 and December 2013. This is otherwise known as: London Semester Abroad.

This is the song that starts The World’s End, which I watched right before going abroad. And it put me in the perfect mood to go to Britain.

New York was a summer of work and I was ready to let loose. And really let loose. I was brimming with confidence and ambition – this was my time to shine. Studying abroad had always been something my family praised and encouraged us to do, and now I was carrying on the family name abroad. I couldn’t let them down.

That, and I was in London. As much as I loved and dreamed of New York, London was London. It still has that effect on me – I feel like my life is a series of events that leads me back to that city.

I grew up loving British media and now I was going to be able to get a taste of being part of the culture. And God, I loved it. I loved the pubs, the West End shows, the museums, the diversity of people. The Tube was heaven-sent compared to the L and the Metro. The different dialects in the city, the river Thames, the fact that Europe was just a plane or train ride away. The world lives in a city and that city is called London!

And, oh, the pubs. There is nothing as beautiful as a pub. I felt like I was walking into an elaborately set up living room every time I entered one. Even if it wasn’t an authentic pub, it was still wonderful being part of the experience. I could feign being a local or fit right into my extended tourist status. Pubs were warm and filled with glorious beer and fish and chips. Pubs were where people conversed and friendships were formed.

Traveling Europe was something that was also a priority, right from the beginning. That’s where friendships were made or grew. I have so much admiration and respect for the friends I made in the program, and those people that I explored with will always have a special place in my heart.

The feeling of packing, repacking, unpacking, repacking, unpacking became routine – I was traveling nearly every other week. To see the world and test how far I could go was exhilarating. One of the best weeks of my life was spent in Keswick with the Encompass Trust and meeting truly inspiring, incredible people from around the world. Shout out to you guys if you’re reading this!

I don’t remember sleeping that semester. Pretty much at every hour, every minute, every second of the day I had something planned. So much so that I remember literally running to class a lot, especially if it was a show at a theatre in another zone.

Without a doubt, I had a party.

7. Loud Pipes – Ratatat

The Tube song, as I like to think of it. My commute for this semester from the flat to school took thirty minute with roughly a 10 minute Tube ride. Also, the Tube was really the best way to get around London (although I subjected many a-friend to my feats of walking around… I could go seven hours without stopping).

The rhythm of the tube and its dependency made the morning experience relatively easy and mainly enjoyable (if it wasn’t incredibly crowded or if there were repairs). “Mind The Gap” and everyone would politely walk on. Standing by the little window at the front of the car was always fun if you wanted to be silly and have your hair flapping everywhere. People were mainly quiet on the Tube, but every now and then there were kerfuffles (largely the arguments were about rudeness).

My favorite station to come out of was the Liverpool station. It was grand and the windows and escalators made everything feel so tall, but mainly my regular destination that I had once I got out of the station…

8. GMF – John Grant

Near the end of the semester, I got into the habit of regularly going to Rough Trade East in Shoreditch. I would always pass through the Old Spitalfields Market, gazing at the different merchandise that the vendors set up. Coffee shops, knick-knacks, fedoras. Magnets, journals, ornaments, Banksy wall signs. Any quirky little thing you could think of was in Spitalfields.

But that wasn’t the ultimate destination – that was a few blocks over. I would pass by the AllSaints and turn into a small street with a sign directing me the right way. I would turn the corner and a Space Invader and Andre has a posse would greet me high above on the buildings. And then, there it was, my indie haven: Rough Trade East.

In New York, my regular place of media meditation was the Strand, a bookstore with weaving shelves of books old and new. Everyone who shopped and worked there had a love for the literary. It felt so good to be surrounded by so many words. In London I had Rough Trade, where I was surrounded by eclectic music and coffee aromas from the in-store cafe.

Rough Trade was where I realized that I still have so much to learn – here I was thinking I was on top of my game in music knowledge, but when they released their top 10 albums of the year, I had maybe only heard of one of them. So, instead of listening to them online, I would just come to the store since they would play the entire albums overhead. That’s how I started listening to John Grant.

GMF (Greatest Motherfucker, if you want to bypass the censorship) is intricately written and beautifully sung. It’s sad but it isn’t, it’s funny but it isn’t. His sarcasm and anger at those who didn’t understand him was so pointed and it never felt heavy-handed. These sorts of musicians are the reason to go outside of your normal realm and see what else is out there.

9. All In White – The Vaccines

Leaving London was harder than I could have even imagined. Once I was there, the semester had this glow and warmth like it was never going to end. As the weeks grew fewer and fewer in number, I had to face the inevitable end of my abroad adventure. I didn’t want the bliss of living in London to end, so I tackled these feelings through the best way I knew how – walking.

In New York, a common habit of mine would be to just walk from point A to point B in Manhattan to just see what life had to offer above the Metro lines. Because places I needed to be in London were further away, I didn’t have as much of a chance to do this as often. So, after my last class, I decided to walk home from school to the flat. It was pretty much a straight shot via Oxford Street. I decided to listen to the Vaccines, one of the many Brit rock bands that circulate through my listening cycle. I had first started listening to their What Do You Expect From The Vaccines? album in line at the Trader Joe’s in East Village, it was only fitting to listen to it straight through in London.

Double-decker buses whizzed by under the string of lights. The storefronts brightened the sidewalks and started to dim the further away I got from Oxford Circus. Hyde Park gleamed with the Winter Wonderland festival in the distance. And finally I was almost home with Jay Jay Pistolet crooning in my head. These scenes of familiarity would soon just turn into memories, but not before I could say good-bye.

10. Do I Wanna Know? – Arctic Monkeys

This song started to be in my listening cycle in London and carried over into LA as the album shot up in the charts. I had always liked the Arctic Monkeys, but AM is what stopped me from being lazy with listening to their stuff. I have a before and after memory: The “Before” memory was in Rough Trade when their album started to be displayed all around the store. AM was one of the albums that they played overhead and I could feel that this was the start of something big. (Or at least, I’d like to believe that I had that sort of intuition). The “After” memory was when I was sitting in the car in LA after one of my first days of work. I had missed my turn home and I was destined to turn around and wait in the intimidating line of traffic.

I had not driven in over a year and hardly in the past two years. I put in AM to calm my nerves.

“Alright. Alright, so you made a mistake. But we have the Arctic Monkeys and it’s gonna be okay… oh god I’m so screwed,” I said to myself. But then Do I Wanna Know? started and it was this slight bit of distraction helped my fear ebb.

So I did it. I was able to get home and get through about three fourths of the album. So it’s an understatement when I say that AM is a very comforting album for me.

11. Lazy Eye (Acoustic) – Silversun Pickups

This is not the song I was listening to when I got into my car accident. That was Substitution, and I almost put that on the playlist.

I could try to explain what it was like going through that. But I don’t want to. I like to think of my memory of listening to Silversun Pickups in LA as a positive one.

I thought a lot about which Silversun Pickups song to put on the list just because there was resurgence of their music in my listening cycle during the beginning of the semester. This was largely due to the fact that I finally, finally, finally got to watch a record store performance after my failed attempt in London.

After just haphazardly picking up flyers at Other Music in New York and never really doing with them, I decided in London that I would actually take initiative. So, after class one night late in the semester, I hopped on the tube and went to Shoreditch to Rough Trade. It was a half hour after the performance had started and… it was over. I was walking into a semi-full store with cables being coiled and microphones being taken down.

This time, I wasn’t going to miss my chance.

Amoeba Music was having an acoustic set of Silversun Pickups featuring Nikki and Brian. I was able to write an article about it on Amplified, which you can find here.

So I drove down into Hollywood, the traffic becoming less foreboding as I had become more accustomed to driving again. I was proud of myself for being able to navigate and park during rush hour. I got inline outside and was the second to last group to be let into the store. Fortune would run out the next day (as that was the day of the accident), but not at that time. At that moment it was about the music and the band.

Entering Amoeba is the most satisfying feeling for a music junkie to ever experience. After so many articles describing the decline of the record stores and being used to hole in the walls (which are still fantastic, just different), it is a shot of adrenaline to walk into a warehouse-sized store of just media, most of music. Rows and rows and rows of new and used. Discounts! Sweepstakes! Sell back your old music! These were signs that popped up around the store, whether it was near the poster section or next to a listening station near the book section. Upstairs was the film and television section and it was made for cinephiles: there are different sections such as films categorized by directors. So, this was of course the place that I chose for Record Store Day. I didn’t stand in the line, but I was able to get a silkscreen shirt and sneak Regina Spektor’s single at the cashier so I fulfilled my goal of getting a RSD exclusive.

Entering Amoeba on the night of the in-store performance was that feeling times 30. The store was packed with people, like lined up next to each other. I was on the right side of the store facing the little stage, looking over the bookshelves to get a good look.

Brian and Nikki were dynamic on stage together as a duo and in their music. The best part of it was that everyone around me was just excited as I was.

“Yes, oh yes I wanted them to play this!” a girl my age next to me gushed as they started Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings).

I smiled, bemused and happy. The feeling to be surrounded by people who like the same music as me is new, so talking about bands like Jukebox the Ghost or Local Natives is still exciting to me. Growing up I’d largely keep to myself what I listened to because I figured none of my peers would like it. Thankfully, I’ve met people that have proven me wrong and have in fact started many enriching friendships based on music.

I was on my tiptoes for the concert, my stomach tightened as each song played. They weren’t playing it yet.

For their last song, they started playing Lazy Eye and now it was my turn to be bubbly and emotional.

“You were waiting for that one, huh?” she laughed next to me.

“Oh my gosh, yes, this is the best, just the best.” I blabbered, my smile widening.

And they closed the set with that powerful, gut-wrenching song. That vortex of emotion and instrumental angst. It filled the whole space of the store.

I had never felt so happy to be part of a community.

12. The After Party – Bad Books

After the accident I couldn’t really listen to my normal cycle of songs. I’m someone who has always had emotional ups and downs, but this was different. This was like I was in a fog. I walked and I talked but I still felt like I was living the accident, the numbness and the shock not really shaking off. I knew I needed something different, something to cut through the dullness. I asked for song recommendations and this is the one that stood out to me. I didn’t listen to it until it was night and peaceful. I had been writing down me thoughts and feelings into the late hours and felt that it was time to try to listen again. The song started and it was dark and broody, tranquil and harrowing. The intense aloneness that I had been feeling was being described in such a visceral way… it was like I had thought of it.

And then… crash. The ending of the song was an explosion – with the shouting and guitars being shredded, the loneliness turned into anger and confusion and desperation. My heart flipped over and it was like I came back online. I broke down as the song finished, calm as the guitars strummed to the end.

I wasn’t in a good place yet, but at least I was there again.

13. Whirring – The Joy Formidable

If The After Party is what helped me get back online, Whirring helped me deal with change, inconsistency and the day-to-day frustration of simple things like driving. I had listened to the song before, but only the three minute cut that SPIN Magazine had released online with their monthly free playlist downloads (when they still did that sort of thing). The first time I really listened to the song, though, was when I was trying to fall asleep one night.

Thinking that I’d have a nice little moment of yesteryear nostalgia, I was greatly mistaken when the song didn’t end. I already knew that it sounded different from the version that I had gotten to know, but I didn’t think it’d keep going…

But I couldn’t stop listening. The title of the song made so much more sense now, the guitars and power blasting through until the end.

This was the strength that I needed.

I listened to this when I felt unsure or tired or questioning. The feeling of being anxious, especially when driving, was starting to be more tolerable. I had a song that could get that anxiety and frustration out. I didn’t need to shout or cry; I had Whirring.

14. Strong Hand – CHVRCHES

This is one of the ultimate LA workout songs, perfect for the mind and body.

If you go abroad and you gain weight, you’re doing it right. But, coming back to reality, it’s important to get healthy again. Luckily, I was no stranger to developing a workout routine. At school when I first started really getting into the routine of working out (I had to – second semester of freshman year was a blur of Cheez-its and Gatorade every night), El Camino was the album for me. On the elliptical I felt unstoppable, unreachable. The Black Keys are my force.

It hadn’t been until CHVRCHES’ The Bones Of What You Believe where I felt so amped up by an album as much as El Camino. I’d play it in the car driving to school, while I was running. Strong Hand is what turned me into a fan.

This song was fun, vibrant and ballsy. Their best fan video is a choreographed workout video and it’s awesome. The song embodied my drive to get back in shape and take on the craziness of LA. Once you get past some of the anxiety that goes with the city, LA has things that are unlike any other place in the world. Sentences like “I met Danny Pudi and talked about Chicago” are commonplace in LA, something which floored me. Panels, festivals, exhibits, markets are everywhere. It was like a caffeine-kick to join the brilliantly textured scene of the city.

15. Heaven – The Walkmen

The semester ended with friends, exploration and triumph. In LA there are so many “what-ifs” where you can easily go crazy with worry. “What if I don’t talk to as many people as I can? What if I can’t go to the beach this weekend? What if I miss that screening?”

It’s better to just live in the moment and see how much you can do.

What I was able to do was hang out the amazing friends that I had met while being there. With a few of them I was able to finally have one last exploration to Santa Monica Pier, something I had wanted to right from the beginning. I wanted to feel like I was adventuring until the very end.

What I was also able to do was talk to as many people as I could about the business. I got so much great advice and learned so much from a variety of people. Now what I need to do is digest it all.

So what song was there to better describe accomplishment and optimism than the Walkmen’s Heaven? This was the song that played over the credits over the HIMYM finale. I watched it with a few friends, one of them being a mega-fan of the show. It was an elating experience to watch her reactions, and her passion was inspiring. As I left their apartment after the show was over, I listened to the song.

“Remember, remember all we fight for.”

Without the friends that I had made and developed in each city I would not have had the phenomenal experiences that I had. Without the people that I kept in contact with overseas or back home or back at school I would not have been able to still feel connected to other places that are significant to me. It’s these people that inspire me and make me want to continue to get to know more people and to explore and keep testing myself. I have so many goals for myself and I want to achieve as many as I can. I know that I have the strength and sometimes I just have to remind myself that I do. That feeling of dreaming even after all of the experiences that I have had hasn’t gone away and that’s the best feeling of all.

We do the things we want to do for a reason and with every leap that you take, you learn how to jump a little further.

As for me, I’m still jumping.

~

Bonus Track: Chelsea Dagger – The Fratellis

This song applies to every city that I was in… How could I not include the Chicago Blackhawks song? In New York, I watched the Blackhawks win it all: the Bruins fans were dumbstruck and the Blackhawks fans were choking on air after those 17 seconds. Even a few hours after the game I was still jumping up and down outside of my building on the sidewalk and shouting to my brother on my phone.

In London, I lost touch with hockey. However, it was when I watched an Arsenal match in a true football pub that I felt the nostalgia for my hockey viewing days. The shouting, the jeering, the cheering. People spilled their beers like it was no matter when their team scored a goal. The electricity of sports viewing was contagious, and I wanted to get back into the routine of watching my team.

So, I did in LA. If I could I would catch a game and get back into the swing of things. I’m newer to the hockey fandom, but not new in the slightest to sports fandoms. By the end of LA, I was keeping up with the Hawks diligently.

Things come and go and things resurface. It’s all about the place and the time.