Traveling Tunes

I started off my seven-hour ride to Jackson singing through my "Love Hurts" playlist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it put me into a funk. I would occasionally shoot hateful glares at my iPod for saying emotionally insightful things that made me feel bad. But then "Gollum's Song" from The Two Towers came on, and I nearly wrecked the car scrabbling to click forward to the next song.

There are depressing songs, and then there's "Gollum's Song." You don't get out of that emotional abyss for at least a week.

Despite a nice interlude getting lunch, where I walked past a guy wearing a Captain America t-shirt and involuntarily complimented him on it (The Avengers is making me kind to strangers! Miracle movie!), I was getting worried that I would show up at the Hughes's house a sobbing wreck, whining about my lack of a love life.

All that changed when I switched to my "Instrumental" playlist. It's got songs from Pirates of the Caribbean, old band songs, Moulin Rouge, The Royal Tennenbaums, and other awesome music without lyrics. I used to adore soundtracks, but I haven't listened to any instrumental music in probably years. The combination of nostalgia and genuine amazeballs music had me grinning like an idiot.

I was particularly terrifying when Jack's theme from PotC 2 came on. I sang along with the notes, flailed my arms in the air and dramatically punched my thigh like some kind of demented, masochistic conductor. It was wonderful. That playlist ended right as I pulled into the Hughes's neighborhood. Perfection! The power of words destroyed me, and then the power of music built me back up into a furiously happy person. I'm going to need to get back into soundtracks, I think.