I can remember the smell of my second grade teacher. I don’t know why except that she was my favorite teacher in the world. Certain smells bring me back to different times in my life like the smell of burning asphalt in summer (our driveway growing up before we moved) and some unnameable smell that I smell occasionally and reminds me of the Disney cruise we took when I was 4. I know that the sense of smell is supposed to be the strongest and for me it is certainly up there. But I have found, especially lately, that music brings back memories and feelings of times past more than anything else.
It was music back in 5th grade that gave me a funny feeling about the new teacher in Hebrew school (he played guitar and taught us a new way to sing Oseh Shalom – he was so dreamy). It is the music I listened to in middle school, high school, college, and beyond that makes me think about those times so vividly when I hear those songs again.
I’m the type of person who can listen to a song on repeat for hours. Is everybody like that? Sometimes a song just hits me and it gets stuck in my brain. Here are some songs I’ve obsessed over:
As She’s Walking Away by Zac Brown Band (feat. Alan Jackson)
Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver
Cathedrals by Jump, Little Children
Diane (really the entire Keep It Together album) by Guster
Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap
Samson by Regina Spektor
Empty by Ray LaMontagne
Hallelujah by anyone who ever sings it
The Family Song by Michael Napolitano of Preschool of Rock (a music class for toddlers) (Yes, really.)
The Nutcracker Pas de Deux by Tchaikovsky
Alexander Hamilton and every other song from Hamilton (Lin Manuel Miranda is a genius)
There are more. The list goes on. And when I think of each song I can clearly remember the time in my life when I was obsessed with it. I feel the same feelings if only for those 3 or 4 minutes. Guster was the soundtrack to my summer after high school graduation. Hide and Seek was blaring on the drive up to visit my best friend at Putney when we were in college and I was mid break-up or some crisis of the heart. Cathedrals was my junior year of high school. The Pas de Deux is our song – the song we got engaged to and the song I walked down the aisle to. And Hamilton – don’t even get me started.
Lately I have a new obsession. About a month ago we went to a Tot Shabbat at the synagogue and heard a few songs from Tizmoret, a Jewish a cappella group from Queens College’s Hillel. Now I’m a sucker for a cappella so I was already into it. Then they sang a song and told everyone to get up and dance. No one did. No one except my daughter. She stood up and danced every second of that song and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her the whole time. I even took a little video but I felt guilty doing it on shabbat in the synagogue so started it too late and ended it too early but I was able to get the idea. She was dancing wildly with limbs flying in every direction – I mean she looked a little crazy but I so admired her complete lack of inhibition. She was DANCING! I envied her and was amazed by her and was so proud of her and hoped that she would always be the one to get up and dance even if no one else was. The song she was dancing to was called Et Rekod – a song originally by Yaakov Shwekey – an incredibly popular orthodox Jewish singer who sings under the name Shwekey. Et Rekod means Time to Dance and the translation of the lyrics according to zinga lyrics is this:
There is a time for everything
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for war and a time for peace
But tonight we are all happy
It’s time to dance!
If you have 4 minutes I highly recommend you watch the video on YouTube linked above. If you have google play you should listen to the Tizmoret version on their album Where We Begin because that is the one I listened to no fewer than 15 times in the car today (and probably more I’m just embarrassed to say the real number). It’s catchy, it’s upbeat, it’s hopeful, and above all it’s a reminder to take a page from my 5 year old daughter’s book of life – when you hear music DANCE.
Am I alone? Does everyone obsess in this way? What songs do you have on repeat?
Mama Mader at Home 