PROMPTuesday #189: A Life in Song

It’s been too long since I’ve posted a PROMPTuesday. I swear, it took me all last week to put myself back together after a bout of 12-hour days that stretched into oblivion. It’s as if I suffered from a work hangover, and it was sublime lovely but you know when your body tells you to slow down? You need to hear it loud and clear, because things will happen if you don’t, like: yelling, crying, hurting, sighing, angsting, overeating, unexercising, blanding, and bloating. So after a few days of ignoring the call to chill, my body exploded in a splendid fireworks display of OUT OF BALANCE, which stopped me in my tracks. I needed a reset button, and in between saying no when I needed to, and asking for help, I began to eat more healthfully and breathe. It’s working.

Yet, in the midst of this EPIC and forced biophysical decompression, I realized I hadn’t PROMPTuesdayed in awhile and that this little writing exercise is tantamount to my soul building, and that’s when I began a draft post I knew would have to show up here at one time or another.

And here it is, sort of. I’m going to publish the prompt and begin my response, but the full prose will follow later this week so as not to overwhelm. This is a long one, and too much at one time, is too much.

So meanwhile, for this PROMPTuesday, I want you to tell your life in song. Which songs defined significant moments in your life? I’d love to see a backwards evolution if you will…starting with the first song you remember hearing/loving and progressing through your life (grade school, junior high, high school, college, first job, etc.). I plan to post a paragraph or two below each song title that describes where that song brings me to, what I was doing, and with who. However, for now…this is how I’m doing it.

First song I remember loving:

Love Will Keep Us Together

Song that defined my grade school experience:

Morning has Broken

Song that defined my high school experience:

U2’s Bad. And everything by Yaz.

And so on…

I’m fleshing this out quite a bit in the next few days because it’s amazing what comes to mind when you hear these landmark-to-you songs again — the memories and pictures they evoke, so if that happens to you too, go with it. For instance, the entire REO Speedwagon “You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish” album? Makes me think of my friend Lori’s basement, where we’d sit in the dark and listen to each song over and over, picking up the needle and scratching it back down to the beginning. Lori matured much faster than I did, and I recall feeling she was moving ahead of me. It seemed like group sex was happening in a room nearby and I wouldn’t, couldn’t join because it wasn’t me.

So for you. You can tell your life in song titles or pick a song and a moment and describe it fully, or do that for several songs. Up to you. Just…:

Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.