Laurustina

The song is stuck in my head this morning.

The photo still makes me smile.

The 3+ years she's been gone are mostly a blur.

I keep waiting to come out the other side of the grief

but the truth is – there is no other side.

Mouse is down in LA this week, chasing rainbows. This afternoon I sat down at the desktop computer which I've mostly allowed him to take over when he's here, and rediscovered my entire music collection. Having transferred something in the neighborhood of 100 songs to my laptop, the 21 GB of music on this ancient old desktop seems staggering. It's been a struggle to focus on work then, while I'm toggling screens so I can listen to the long forgotten soundtrack of my life. 

This morning I stumbled across a video that Mouse put together a couple of years ago, soundtracked by Antony & The Johnsons' "Divine". I thought I'd share it here. 

[The following is a partial list of the songs my computer's media player currently shows as Five-Star-rated. This list is, of course, subject to change and flights of fancy, but I will try not to tinker with it just to make myself seem hipper, cooler or more musically literate.]

Aaron Neville’s  ”Ave Maria”

ABBA’s  ”Fernando”

Al Green’s  ”Let’s Stay Together”

Alanas Moresette’s  ”You Oughts Know”

Alice In Chains’  ”Don’t Follow”

Alice In Chains’  ”Sludge Factory”

Amos Lee’s  ”All My Friends”

Antony and the Johnsons’  ”Cripple and the Starfish”

Antony and the Johnsons’  ”Divine”

Aretha Franklin’s  ”Chain of Fools”

When my uncle died unexpectedly a few years back, his wife and a nephew stayed up late the night before the memorial, burning a CD of some of his favorite songs to play before and after the service. In the rush of the next day, however, the CD got forgotten and their labor of love got left behind. A couple of years later, I found myself making this mental list of songs I would want someone to think to play if I was the one who’d made my early exit.

I was still working on the list when Ash died, and some of the songs I see on here now have become hers in my mind.  (In particular the Hans Zimmer, the Dylan and the Pink Floyd). Even now, I shy away from all Pink Floyd. This post has been sitting in my draft box for nearly two years now, except for the last couple of sentences. I am sick of looking at it, feeling the horror that comes with the realization that i was worrying about the music for my own memorial, not knowing that Ash would make her escape before i did, and the guilt, of course, of even considering it “my escape” in the first place. Anyway, without fanfare, or further self-flagellation, i’ll post what was once intended to be my eulogy mix, back when the idea of a memorial CD was theory rather than reality.

• I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free – Nina Simone
• The Happy Land – Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
• Ave Maria – Aaron Neville
• Latter Days – Over The Rhine
• Scarborough Faire/Canticle – Simon and Garfunkle
• You Belong to Me – Bob Dylan
• Nitemare Hippie Girl – Beck
• Muhammed My Friend – Tori Amos
• It is Well With My Soul – Mahalia Jackson
• Under the Milky Way – The Church
• House of the Rising Sun – Lester Norton’s (by personal request) cover
• If You See Her, Say Hello – Bob Dylan
• Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
• Rivers of Babylon – Sublime
• Lithium – Nirvana
• Variations on a Theme from Paganini – Rachmananov
• Leonard Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will” – Antony Haggerty’s cover
• You’re So Cool – Hans Zimmer

So there it is.