Whether you gauge its onset based on the calendar or how long
you’ve been wearing flip-flops, spring is nearly three weeks old–
but the tunes in my CD player aren’t warming up accordingly.

Certain music was made for summer. If you’ve ever listened to
the warm and lazy songs on Jets to Brazil’s Four Cornered Night or
the quintessential road trip soundtrack that is Weezer’s blue
album, you’ll know just what I mean.

Then there are those darker, bolder songs that chill me right to
the core.

Sigur Ros’ untitled white album and Something Corporate’s
sophomore release, North, are characteristically winter albums that
frame my current state of mind. There are times and seasons when
music such as this lends itself particularly well to sorrow, or
even just some serious introspection. These are the times when the
sun fails to coax Weezer from its sleeve in my CD case, and the
same icy dirges melt in my ears time and again as I wallow in
reverie.

I find myself holding on to songs that devastate me–songs that
remind me of how wonderful it is to fall for someone and how tragic
it is when their heart lies just beyond your reach.

Each time you give your heart away you don’t really get it all
back in the end. We lose these little pieces along the way and we
cry over them, when really these people never loved us like we
deserved to be loved anyway.

Instead of being consumed by the perpetual search for the person
who will fill in these missing pieces, we must start filling them
in ourselves. Somewhere along the way these pieces lead us to the
person who brings everything together. This discovery is, for me,
enshrined in a particular song.

I would tell you what song it is, but it’s not the same unless
you’re in a hotel room in Crete on a breezy night in early November
during your first trip to Europe, and you can’t decide if your head
is spinning because of the ouzo or because this person holding
headphones to your ears has somehow stolen your heart.

Thus, the music itself is tertiary. But as the song builds and
the sprawling piano solo trickles from my speakers, I close my eyes
and I’m right back in Greece.

The question I ask of you is, do you ever hear a song and
picture yourself inside of it, as though your life was meant to be
set to music? You sing at the top of your lungs and even though no
one can hear you find release in the knowledge that your life
exists within the context of these chords, and in the words that
someone else has put to your lips.

Sometimes a song or an album brings my thoughts together and
provides me with a sonorous sense of clarity and connectedness. I
can’t help but wonder who else has shivered on sunny 70-degree
days, or who else feels as though their heart is thousands of miles
away. And I wonder if, on the search for their missing pieces, they
find the right kind of music to put themselves together.

So the next time that you feel out of context, I hope that you
can reach for an album that makes you feel perfectly infinite–even
if it’s still winter in your heart.