Songs I Forgot to Mention

"Past and Pending," The Shins: Never fails to make me feel peaceful in my life, if only for five minutes and twenty-two seconds.

"Electric Feel," MGMT: The theme song to my trip to LA, the best vacation I've ever had. I could count on my fingers the number of times I've listened to it since then - it's a wonderful song, but it evokes the feelings of that trip so strongly that I'm reluctant to weaken that power by invoking it too often.

"The Dream of Evan and Chan," Dntel: Can't believe I forgot this the first time around. How can a song be both a perfect account of the sensible nonsense that is the most vivid and emotional of dreams and also so incredibly universal? It's always perfect until something rings to bring you back to this world of concrete and pragmatism. "I won't let go, I won't let go/even if you say so oh no..."It's a wrenching anthem to snooze buttons, essentially - the heartrending description of why you wish you could have slept just a few minutes more, why you tried so hard to stay asleep a little longer. To the best kind of dreams - the ones that inspired Inception, the ones that serve as the subconscious spark to the castles you build in the air when you just can't read anymore and need to lean back in your chair and shut your eyes.

I think it's telling that at this current place in my life, these three songs evoke the strongest emotional response of any of those I've listed in this blog - the three I forgot. This actually could serve as a litmus test for how well people know me - putting a finger on the reason the songs that move me the most did not get discussed in my initial posting.

...well, maybe "the strongest" is in itself a little strong. Because now I'm listening to "Alone in Kyoto" and lord in heaven do I wish I could Delorean myself back to that evening. I might have felt even lower then than I do now, but at least it was a low that held a future inside it.