What’s at the Top of Your Lifetime Playlist?

What’s at the Top of Your Lifetime Playlist?

Being married to a musician, I probably spend a lot more time listening to, watching, and learning about music than the average non-musician. It helps that I’ve always loved many kinds of music, even though the extent of my musical training and skill ran to a six-week course in the recorder back in second or third grade at St. Agnes Catholic School. I think we learned “Baa-Baa Black Sheep” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” The boys used the recorders as swords – I’m not sure what ever happened to mine.

So when John tries to explain using this chord instead of that one or how Dave Nachmanoff doesn’t use traditional tuning for a lot of his songs, it’s mostly lost on me. He tells me, however, that I have a pretty good grasp of sound for a non-musician, even though I don’t know the musical terms to precisely convey what I mean. When we’re watching those singing competition shows and I say, “It’s not round enough” or “It’s very tinny,” he knows exactly what I mean, and usually agrees with me.

My mom’s family was very musical. I wish I knew what happened to it, but there was a black-and-white photo of her with a number of her 11 siblings, each standing around a tree holding a musical instrument. My mom held a violin – but I never heard her talk about playing it, so that may have just been a pose for the picture. Back at about the same time I was tinkering with the recorder, my Aunt Molly (Modesta) made an album of Spanish songs of which my mother was both very proud and very envious. That, like the photo, disappeared into the wind with my mother’s illness. She spilled stuff on or broke or tore up or otherwise destroyed most of the mementos I – and, presumably Eric and his family – would cherish today.

My niece, Samantha, has quite a vocal talent. Corina and I thought for some time that she would study music and perform professionally, but after high school, she gave up singing entirely, except to occasionally sing with her church group. She sang two songs at my father’s funeral – and we wanted her to sing at my mom’s memorial Mass five years later, but she refused. Cori finally cajoled her into it, and she sang “Ave Maria,” after which all of my mother’s relatives clapped, like it was a recital. I thought the priest was going to have a heart attack. I really wanted her to sing at our wedding reception, but that didn’t happen. John’s stepmom, Gayle, stepped in and did an amazing job covering U2’s “All I Want Is You.”

In spite of my father, who preferred silence to any sort of music, I have appreciated music from my earliest days. And, I have what I sometimes think of as a series of soundtracks from different eras of my life. I put those all together into a musical version of my life story for Eric this past Christmas. I vacillated about giving it to him, as it felt more than a little self-indulgent. Nevertheless, my history is his history, so I gambled that he would find it at least somewhat interesting. I won’t share the whole list here because it was a very personal gift to him. If this blog ever makes it into print as a book, I’ll reconsider. I will, however, give you my intro to Eric’s Playlist:

So the last time I heard “Forever Young” on the radio, it occurred to me that I might make you a “mix tape” of the songs that were important to me throughout my life – and as I put the playlist together (we actually recorded them on cassettes when I was your age), I started jotting notes about each song. My initial goal was to record the whole thing on an MP3 player for you so I could include these descriptive bits as audio recordings – but that became labor intensive, so I decided to move into the 21^st century and do it the sensible way, with an iTunes playlist (or, more accurately, two iTunes playlists).

The songs are more or less in some attempt of chronological order. Some will seem weird to you, no doubt – but all played a key role in my growing up, development as a person, are things I just love, and/or are pieces of music I’ve shared with John. Maybe you’ll enjoy listening to them – maybe just reading about them. Either way, here we go.

1. Rod Stewart – “Forever Young” –This song is the whole reason I made this playlist for you, Eric. Every time I hear it, I think of you. I’m not sure how well we will ever get to know each other, but I hope you have even a small understanding of how much you are loved and that I wish only the very best things in life for you.

Eric never commented on the playlist, so I have no idea what he thought of it. No matter – it was a wonderful walk down Memory Lane for me. I had a blast playing most of the 92 songs on it a few times each as I put the list together. I say “most” because I included music I didn’t especially like, if it was important for some reason.

So there you have it, the first of my promised posts created from randomly selected words. Still have Bravery and Caves to tackle as topics from the same writing prompt, so stay tuned!

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Laura Orsini is an author who works with other authors to help them make and market exceptional books that change the world for the better. She is birthmother to Eric, who is finishing college in Boston this summer. Their adoption has been open for the better part of Eric’s life. She continues to toy with the idea that these posts will one day become a book. In the meantime, you can learn about her novel in progress, Stan Finds Himself on the Other Side of the World.