The Commute

I commute from Vancouver to Portland every day. It's 14.3 miles, and with no traffic it's a 20-minute drive. Portland and Vancouver are separated by the Columbia River, which means all routes between the two include a bridge. There are exactly 2 bridges connecting these cities--the next closest bridge is 45 miles away. 2 bridges. 7 lanes total.

So there is always traffic.

And every day as I sit in my car during this 40-minute drive, inching forward down I-5, I think to myself, I really should be doing something productive with all this time. And I'll start doing the math. 40 minutes each way, times 2 times a day, times 5 times a week = 6.7 hours. Which is 353 hours a year. That's like 23 seasons of TV. Or nine full work weeks. Or 7 times longer than I spent writing my thesis. I could get books on tape and finally finish Mockingjay. I could be catching up on the dozens of episodes of This American Life that have been filling up my iTunes. I could be chatting with family. Trying to figure out Derrida. Thinking about content for the press release I'm writing at work. I could be planning what I'll eat for dinner. My next Relief Society lesson. What I'll wear tomorrow.

Instead, I have memorized every word to Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger." And Katy Perry's "Part of Me." And Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain." And Train's "Drive By."

This weekend I thought I'd mix it up and create a driving playlist to listen to instead of the radio. This seemed like a good compromise between mindlessly singing along to the same five radio songs and actually doing something productive. Once or twice a year I create a playlist named with the date, and I add every song I feel like listening to that day. I do this mostly because it's so endearing to go back to, say, the "September 13, 2010" playlist and be reminded that I was obsessed with songs like "Calm Under the Waves," and "Nevermind Me," and that I had a little Dave Matthews Band revival with songs like  "The Space Between." So, on Saturday I create a "March 31, 2012" playlist and added everything I was in the mood for in my music library.

As I drove to work today, I was intensely fascinated by the version of me that had created this playlist a mere 48 hours earlier.

First, there were a ton of Chicago songs. The band from the 80s. Like "What Kind of Man Would I be?" and "Love Me Tomorrow." And lots of Lifehouse--the early 2000s stuff with really slow songs like "Simon," and "Everything." It also included "The Freshman," by the Verve Pipe. Celine Dion. Lots and lots of Snow Patrol. Some U2. Some DMB. Lots of Goo Goo Dolls. Some Dashboard Confessional. A few Joni Mitchell songs. And almost a whole Train album.

Aside from some Imogen Heap and Regina Spektor, it was like a perfect melding of high school and freshman year of college memories. Every song was a major jolt into the past. Dashboard's "Screaming Infidelities" takes me back to afternoons in May during my Senior year of high school, driving to Lacamas Lake with the windows down. Snow Patrol songs take me back to my oil painting class my freshman year of college when I would work for long uninterrupted hours on my assignments in the art studio and listen to my two Snow Patrol CDs on my discman. During eighth and ninth grade, I would sometimes fall asleep to the Chicago CD because I had borrowed it from my sister, and I felt cool knowing music that my sister owned. And my sister and I used to sing along to Train's "Meet Virginia." I have a very distinct memory of us driving south on 97th and "Meet Virginia" came on the radio. We were so excited, and we sang every word.

Every song on the playlist was intensely saturated with memories. And sure, my playlists often have lots of old music like the Goo Goo Dolls and Lifehouse. But generally they're made up of generic contemporary music like Imogen Heap or Rascall Flatts or the Glee Cast.

And I have no conclusion to this post because I'm still so intrigued by the state of mind that made me feel so in need of 91 songs of pure nostalgia. But the commute was delightfully unproductive.

Music

One of the most anxiety-inducing questions to me is, "what kind of music do you like?" Or, for the 21st century, "what's on your iPod?" I know that I'm a 25-year-old adult and should have my music identity all figured out, but I never know how to respond to this question because the what-kind-of-music-do-you-like question isn't like asking if you like strawberries or youtube videos of kittens. It's a deeply personal and incredibly revealing question. For example, at age 25 saying that your favorite artist is Justin Bieber says something about you (that you don't value quality music, that you're hopelessly at the mercy of side-sweeping boy bangs, and that you're maybe a little bit of a pedophile). For the record, Justin Bieber is far from being my favorite artist, but I know some Bieber songs. I saw Never Say Never. But I wouldn't list him as an aspect of the "kind of music I like" because I'm aware of what liking him might say about me.

This lack-of-a-music-identity problem has deep roots. In 9th grade, I was IMing my new friend Holly, and she asked for a list of my favorites songs because she wanted to make me a mix CD. (BTW, can we pause to bask in nostalgia for the glory days of AOL Instant Messenger and the heyday of Napster and the mix CD?) Holly was the first friend I made in high school, and we were on the cusp of a drama-filled best friendship. So when she asked about my favorite songs in the new stages of our friendship, it was a real make-or-break moment. I sat at my parents' huge biege desktop computer, hands hovering over the clunky keyboard, and I panicked. Not for one moment did I bother to think about what songs I actually liked, but I immediately began racking my brain for the most normal songs I could think of. I wish with all my heart and soul that I could remember all the songs I listed, but I do remember that I listed 5 songs and one of them was "Gray Sky Morning," by Vertical Horizon, and one of them was "Good Riddance," by Green Day. And it isn't that I don't like these songs. And I can't even remember what kind of music would have been a pure reflection of my 9th-grade tastes, but I distinctly remember feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the task of wrapping up my music preferences into a small, tidy bundle and sending them across the world wide web to stand as some sort or representation of who I am.

Obviously, this was a little dramatic. It was 9th grade. In retrospect, I recognize that almost everyone I interacted with in 9th grade was also probably self-conscious about how their likes and dislikes reflected on them as a person. But then I think about how painstakingly I've poured over my Facebook music interests, and it quickly becomes clear to me that this 9th-grade problem is seeping (gushing?) into my twenties.

Now I'm 25, and it's time I sort this all out. Right now.

At first thought, it still seems like a what-will-people-think-of-me problem. If I'm purposely leaving JB off a list of musical interests because of what liking him might say about me, then this must be part of the problem. But then I consider my TV/movie tastes. In addition to liking really solid, award-winning TV like 30 Rock, Mad Men, and Friday Night Lights,  I like all sorts of silly TV and movies, including The Bachelor and all things Amanda Bynes, and while I'm aware of what liking these things might say about me, I don't really care. I can confidently list a wide range of TV/movie interests, and I don't mind if someone thinks I'm lame for following Once Upon a Time or for having every line of You've Got Mail memorized.

The real truth of the music matter is that I'm just not that interested in music. I listen to music while I'm driving and when I go running (which is never). At some point, I was really into the idea of being interested in music, so I tried to build a respectable iTunes library. But now, I can't remember the last time I bought a new song in iTunes. Generally, the music I like is just the music that I've been hearing and not hating on the radio, or the music in my outdated iTunes playlists. So, for me to like Adele, or The Fray, or Lady GaGa means almost nothing about me. And for me to like Justin Bieber doesn't mean that I've poured over volumes and volumes of music and have hand-selected him as the epitome of all that is music. It means that I heard his songs on the radio and they were catchy. (And that I'm maybe a little bit hopelessly at the mercy of side-sweeping boy bangs. I can own it.)

So, my real answer to the what-kind-of-music-do-you-like question is simply, I don't really like music. And my music-identity anxieties come from constantly feeling like I should have a music identity. And that it should be awesomely knowledgable and insightful.