There is Contentment within These Lyrics
My music is my heart. Please don’t break it.
By Marie Ronnander
My father used to sit me on his lap, in his precariously duct-taped swivel chair, and play faded, old music videos. Listening to a song, for him, was like tasting fine wine. Each replay had a slightly different flavor from the first, a deeper understanding that sweetened the rolling rhythms. At the end of each song, his hand would hover over the mouse as he voiced his thoughts and gently prodded for mine. This would be quickly followed by a classic, “well let’s hear that from the start,” as he left-clicked and dragged the cursor to the beginning of the video. Some days were entirely dedicated to one song (and yes, that did get annoying).
As I grew older, the duct-taped chair was replaced, and my high school schedule no longer matched up with a truck-driver's grueling shift. Dad was up at three and asleep by seven. Weeks of my life would pass by without hearing the tenor of his voice. The walls of our house stilled with silence, their beige sheen boring in on me. Our home didn’t make sense without dad’s gentle hums. The only way I could feel his presence was by playing his songs; I began to sway to the same deep, gravel voices, strongly steeped in guitar strings and piano riffs.
Each song was a precious piece of my father’s mind that I clutched to my heart. The weight of these treasures filled me with a deeply urgent poignancy. I needed my dad to know that I heard his voice in his music. That “Vol.1” by the Baseball Project brought me back to our old Toyota Camry. Or how Dire Straits felt like dancing on the shag rug in our tiny living room. And that Bob Dylan’s twang held me like his goodbye hug before I ran into my first grade classroom. I needed my dad to know that I loved him and all of his stories. And all of our stories. This is how my songs became synonymous with my soul.
I learned quickly that music encrypts emotion. Each lyric hangs like a shiny oil painting in an art museum, begging to be deciphered and understood. They were other people’s entire lives poured into words and beats and rhythms. The same patterns echoed throughout different songs; history unfolding through time. The music that my father passed to me was the blueprint to the music I searched for. Each new turn of a genre added more details to the draft. My memories were built with melodies.
As such, each of my favorite songs evokes the memory of my first time hearing it. “Feel Good Inc.” is a humid summer night, and the feeling of laughing so hard your ribs hurt. “Call it Fate, Call it Karma” is the warmth behind someone else’s eyes, and the contentment of knowing you’re loved. “White Braids & Pillow Chair” is the sharp cut of Boston’s skyline at midnight; the freedom in traveling alone. And quite possibly my favorite, “I And Love And You” is an autumn morning in the old Toyota Camry. My dad is driving. My mom is tapping her fingers on the dashboard. This is safety. This is love. This is when everything in life made sense.
For this reason, music has become my time capsule. My Spotify library acts as a dated ledger to my mind that I'm able to rifle through by simply hitting shuffle. In this way, I’ve learned that constantly listening to new music allows me to lock specific memories in place. When I feel like there’s a chapter in life I need to preserve, I’ll construct entire playlists to decorate that time. Each season becomes a new genre with different memories clinging to the harmonies.
Billy Joel’s voice will always bring me back to watching those music videos in my dad’s beat-up, old rolling chair. I’m reminded of a time when our family wasn’t scattered across the states and gathering around an old PC was an after-dinner ritual. My dad gave me his whole heart when he played me his music. He showed me how to love someone through crescendos and blues and rhythms and words. I’ve become a never-ending collage of all these songs; constantly adding new cadences to the collection.