And something's gotta change, cause our love's the slowest moving train.

*I do not purport to offer the world any kind of unique insight with this blog. I just be a babbling. Here goes.

When I l o v e music, I listen to the album over and over and over again, usually as I sit at my computer working on something, or stewing on working on something. And singing. Always singing. It used to annoy Lily. Even if our bedrooms weren't adjacent, she would learn the whole album as I sang along nonstop for hours. "Michelle, you need some new music." I would get new, but then wear it out on repeat. I find that certain albums come to represent some sort of an emotional journey or period of time in my life. For example, 8th grade will always be associated with Fiona Apple's Tidal for me. I had just moved from Virginia to Arkansas, complete emotional turmoil, my first real boyfriend and I broke up, and I felt like an outcast at my tiny country school. Thank you, Fiona. She's helped me out a number of times. Her albums always seem to come out just when I need them. I got Extraordinary Machine in the Spring of my 4th year of college, right around the time when The Break Up happened. 6th grade- Alanis. Ooh puberty is so much easier when Alanis shares your angst. The summer of 2004 Lily, Beth, and I went on our Grand European Adventure. Our friendship was still young and I think we were all still very intoxicated with one another. The album I most associate with those memories is Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things. I have one gem of a memory-- we were riding a train across the continent. I don't remember where to. And Lily had brought along a discman. (no iPod? what?! We didn't even bring digital cameras. I had my dad's old manual Olympus from the 70s. It could have really been any decade on that trip) And we all sat together listening to Rilo Kiley while holding crappy foam headphones from her discman between our heads. We probably did that a million times on the trip. Now, though, it feels like a solitary memory or some kind of a really beautiful vignette. Three very young girls, blazing across the European countryside on a train. I would be in the middle, to give the composition balance, and Lily and Beth would sit on either side, their heads titled in towards mine. A triangle.

I also use albums to reminisce. Today, I'm listening to Rilo Kiley.

Addendum: After reading this, Lily informs me that on the train there was a nun sitting in our compartment with us that became very uncomfortable as we sang along aloud to Rilo Kiley, or possibly because Lily is unforgiving with her leg room. And, also, I agree with her-- The Famed Road Trip of 2007 is set the music of Rolling Stone's Magazines 500 Greatest Rock and Roll Songs of All Time, which we listened to in its entirety as we drove up the West Coast-- Los Angeles to Seattle. With Wild Horses being a stand-out song for me.