So I'm there. Charging around with a juggernaut brow; overdraft speeches and deadlines to make. Cramming commitments like cats in a sack; telephone burn and a purposeful gait, when out of a doorway the tentacles stretch of a song that I know and the world moves in slow-mo, straight to my head like the first cigarette of the day. And it's you, and it's May, and we're sleeping through the day; and I'm five years ago, and 3000 miles away.

-- Elbow, "The Bones of You"

A few weeks ago, my important work-related gadget new toy new iPhone arrived; this time I splurged and got the one with lots of space on it, because I wanted to have all of my music available to me at once rather than having to swap stuff from time to time. It seems like a minor thing, really -- I mean, how much music can you listen to at once, right?

It started a small mental revolution for me. I'm rediscovering my music collection, and it's invigorating to go back and find out which of your old favorites have aged well, and which haven't, and which songs can reach willowy arms into the recesses of my memory and trigger the images of life-moments. Some moments funny, some wistful, all piled up and compressed, like shale in my psyche.

The last ten years have moved really fast. And like Ferris Bueller said, "If you don't stop every once in a while and look around, you might miss it." And so, in no particular order, I present to you three memories, and the music that triggered them:

Memory One: "Mysterons", Portishead

I was in high school: I had a hand-me-down station wagon that I had 'enhanced' with some big speakers in the back. I mean BIG. I literally disconnected the built-in speakers in the tailgate, and ran wires to these big boxes that then rested in the trunk area, blasting tunes. If you wanted to have music on the go, just pop the hatch and pull the speakers out -- they could sit on top of the car, and you could bump your Tool or Public Enemy, or whatever -- and this track was one of my favorites. It's got a heavy trip-hop beat that drops back for Beth Gibbons' vocals, then bumps back. Addictive.

It's too bad I was too much of a nerd for people to recognize how awesome my crappy station wagon was.

Memory Two: "Wish", Nine Inch Nails

I had never heard industrial music before a friend gave me a copy of Broken to check out. The dark lyrics ("This is the first day of my last days / Built it up, now take it apart, climbed up real high now fall down real far / No need for me to stay, my last thing left, I just threw it away / Put my faith in god and my trust in you, now there's nothing more fucked-up I could do." and yes, I still had that memorized. ) appealed to my hormone-addled brain, giving me a rage to help fight the anxiety of being the youngest in my class and the smallest and the not-athletic-est and the transplant from some other town and also the weird interests, like reading books and shit. 

Memory Three: Carmina Burana, Carl Orff

I had an ultra-conservative roommate one of my years in college. He was an excellent roommate, but our tastes, uh, differed, a bit.

One day I came home from class to what I thought was a quiet room. Roommate was at his computer ( aside: he also got me into Linux, which means he unwittingly became the person who most influenced my working life. Funny how that happens. ), typing away, and as I sat down on the couch the music crescendoed to a glorious choral-and-horn climax. I just sat and listened, entranced, then went over to read the CD jacket. Carmina Burana. The sacred and the profane: the wheel of fickle fortune; love, lust, gluttony, gambling. Something we could agree on, in other words.

I was instantly hooked, but I asked him whether the subject matter bothered him; clearly this was less than pure. And he responded that listening, enjoying the poetic expressions of people who discussed these topics was not the same as behaving this way. Learning from the experience of others is a good thing.

Ever since I have sought out music, both sacred and profane, classical or rap or jazz, that lets me experience the thoughts of others. The Red Hot Chili Peppers said it well: "My lily-white ass is tickled pink when I listen to the music that makes me think."

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So tell me: what songs do you remember? What did you learn from them?