It must have been eight years ago, already, when I was in “Much Ado About Nothing.” I was a junior in high school, with long blonde hair that had been pinned and curled and sprayed into ringlets, and I was wearing a luxurious period costume, all reds and golds and heavy fabrics. The low cut of the brocade front – all the better to display a bosom which was directed to heave when a knife was placed under it – was perhaps at odds with the wreath of flowers perched above the curls, the ribbons of which cascaded down my back and interwove themselves amidst my hair. But perhaps it wasn’t at odds, at all, in the no man’s land between being a child and being a woman and trying to enjoy the best of both worlds, both at the same time.

Before one evening’s production began, we in the cast were all assembled, collectively smelling of Aquanet, in our costumes, wearing our make-up and energy with enthusiasm, waiting for the show to start. A movie was playing in the background -- or a boombox, or a stereo – and some random classical waltzing music came on. Dale, resplendent in his bloomers and velvety vest and plumed satin sleeves and floppy hat with a frivolously feather, bowed low to me and extended his hand.

We began to waltz. Neither of us had the faintest clue if we were even doing it properly, but it didn’t seem to matter. It felt like we knew what we were doing. The others watched us indulgently, unsurprised by the spontaneous whims indulged by theatrical folk. It was such a pretty moment, uncluttered, unburdened by any meaning more profound than its existence. He twirled me around, my skirt achieving full volume, and as he pulled me back into his arms, he said, “Don’t you wish life came with a soundtrack?”

***

There’s a photo of us, in that moment. Our arms are extended in mid-pose, and we’re smiling for the camera. I barely recognize myself, but I recognize the thought behind my eyes. It stayed with me, what he said. I tried appropriating the phrase for various writings, poems, prose, titles. It didn’t fit anything I wrote. It is too universal and too personal to have worked in any proprietary way. But I think it works in this setting. Everyone can create a sound track. We spend our lives living to the tune of music, and have since before the ubiquitous white snakes crawled down from all of our ears. We’re born to it. We’ll probably die to it. It is who we are.

Yet it is indefinable. I can’t sit down and arbitrarily create a soundtrack to my life. I tried, I gave it a lot of thought and a lot of drafts and came to the conclusion that music is infinitely too layered to applied in this way, for me. I can explain till I’m blue in the face why Rocky Raccoon will always make me think of my Dad, who has not been shot and is not a cowboy, but it won’t make sense to anyone else. It would help if I told you that he used to stand over my crib and play that song to me on his guitar, and to me, represents my childhood – but the universality of the exercise gets lost in the details. How could anyone understand why a song about two guys fighting in a bar over a girl explains my childhood?

What I’m getting at is the thought that music has far too much emotional baggage. Songs make me think of times in my life in ways that are borderline irrelevant. Rarely they line up nicely—I listened obsessively to Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” as I moved away from home for the first time, to go to school in Baltimore. But most of the time, it makes not much sense. Like how “Norwegian Wood” helped turn me on to all of classic rock, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten there if it weren’t for “Good Vibrations.” Or why “Sweet Child O Mine” simultaneously makes me want to cry and makes me smile, and why I couldn’t listen to it for years. Or how “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” sends crawlers up my back, ever, single, time.

That’s music, for me. It isn’t the soundtrack to my life, it’s a living, breathing, evolving biography of who I am. I can’t divorce the baggage I give music from its intended context, so I can’t make a soundtrack that makes sense to anyone but me.

I go on benders. I just got over a Billy Holliday joint, and I’m tapering off of an Interpol resurgence. That, of course, was mixed with an inexplicable Tom Waits kick, but today, I’ve really been reconnecting with Neutral Milk Hotel. Who can tell what I’ll listen to next, and for what reason. What lyric will inspire me, what voice will speak the words that I’m feeling in a prettier way than I ever could.

I can’t tell what I’ll listen to next, I can’t predict what I’ll feel tomorrow, I can’t create a soundtrack for what has come before me, and I’m certain I can’t craft one for tomorrow’s music. All I know is that somehow, ineffably, the music will define me.

***

Every choice that you make

All decisions you take

Will take you somewhere

Every moment you make

Every seal that you break

Will take you somewhere.

-The Soundtrack of Our Lives, “World Bank”