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Iron & Wine - Carousel

Iron & Wine’s words describing life within the song Carousel are almost as beautiful as a carousel spinning endlessly. It makes me feel that life really is relatable to that old yellow, blue and red carousel at the park near my house.

I would race home after school to run to the miniature carousel that dwelled in the park, which had a name that I was once far too familiar with but now could not recall. The little horses, zebras, giraffes, dogs and various other strange animals were worn down until tarnished metal was heavily prevalent with little splotches of colors that shone through. One of my favorite things to do was to spin that old massive metal contraption until it reached its pinnacle velocity and then let my feet dangle off the side while I clutched perilously to the metal poles that supported the animals. As I spun around until I was nauseous my feet would float effortlessly off the side, sending the powdery dirt flying into the nearby grass.

Once it had begun to spin, that carousel would continue spinning in all of its glory, whether I was on it having fun or screaming in terror. A person would not imagine the blisters that a youngster could attain from what appeared to be a harmless playground piece. However, any discomfort was worth the sensations of dizziness that accompanied the sometimes frantic spinning. The enduring nature of a carousel’s spinning tendencies share common ground with the wonderful aspect of life, still to this day controlling me, that is known as time.

Iron & Wine – Boy With A Coin

Iron & Wine’s song makes me feel that on some levels I am connected with this Boy With A Coin, and in other aspects of life I could not be farther removed from him. I have never fully experienced life like the painful one that is described as his home. However, I have known the pure joy of finding something beautiful in an awful situation.

I recall as a child collecting coins with my grandmother. We would sort through piles of old, tarnished change for hours looking for the proper year, mint and condition. I learned much about the value of small pieces of metal and to this day I begin to get a little nostalgic if I find a coin that I had been searching for and had never found in my youth. Just the other day the discovery of a 1940 Denver Mint nickel prompted me to recall where I would have placed that particular coin in my collection. Its tarnished color and time-worn face would have blended perfectly within the velvet-lined pages of the coin collecting books.

These painstakingly organized books of coins that remain stacked in my closet make a sort of miniature encyclopedia set. These books do not contain knowledge of chemistry, war or economics, but rather could somewhere contain a coin that had been a carefully thought out wish and thrown into a well, with the simple hope that Sam Beam declares incorrectly, “God left the ground to circle the earth”.

Band of Horses – The Great Salt Lake

While Band of Horses is talking about that “old watering hole” in their song, The Great Salt Lake, there arises within my mind not a bar or drinking establishment but rather one distinct scene. If a watering hole is considered some place where people congregate to enjoy what gives them life (i.e. water) then the watering hole of my youth would have to be the old baseball field that was just a couple-mile bike ride away from my house.

The nostalgia that accompanies the base ball field at Andersen Park relates to physical and emotional connections. Too many times to count did we act like little brats and scratch initials into the green wooden benches in the dugout that was constantly littered with dirt and sunflower seed shells. Like any respectable ball field’s dugout, the ceiling was lined with chewing gum of assorted flavors and colors which spelled out wonderful things like “Johnny Mo Show” and “Beans” – which were just two of the nicknames of our teammates.

And yet the ball field was nothing to be mocked, the seriousness of the games played under those blinding, humming lights led way to many pairs of once pristine baseball pants having permanent beige stains due to reckless sliding into bases. And if the pant legs just so happened to remain clean from dirt there was a strong tendency that there would be grass stains covering one, if not both, knees. As any normal child, none of us wanted to go get ice cream after the game without some stain or blemish to designate that we had not only played, we really played on that old field. And in that aspect it would appear that the childhood version of Band of Horses shared a similar experience.

Elliott Smith – Baby Britain

Though Elliott Smith wrote this song, Baby Britain, about alcohol and all that it brings about, there is one particular line that is addressed by multiple shots within the video that stands out far more than images of him playing a piano or singing about his alcoholic tendencies. When he sings the line, “London Bridge is safe and sound” it evokes within me this exact image of a rickety old bridge that spans a creek near my house.

Passing more than a couple signs that read “No Trespassing” and after a short trek through woods along a long-since used set of railroad tracks, one arrives at The Bridge. No real title serves this particular bridge better than the one which my friends and I gave it the summer we found it when we were about thirteen. No intelligent thirteen year-old would have gone to the extent that we did to find this bridge, but nevertheless once we found it, The Bridge served countless hours to pass the time.

Structural integrity is something that is rarely at the front of a young teenager’s mind, so the fact that this bridge’s large wooden planks creaked horribly under our every step was something that rarely bothered us. Rather we were concerned with throwing unlabeled bottles off into the rocky creek and perfecting our sniping with paintball guns from the wonderful vantage point the bridge afforded us into the nearby wooded areas. One would highly doubt that a depressed alcoholic intended a passing reference to pertain to such memories but nevertheless part of my Baby Britain is not the London Bridge but rather the old abandon one.

The Postal Service – Sleeping In

When Ben Gibbard of The Postal Service sings Sleeping In and states, “Don’t wake me I plan on sleeping in, don’t wake me I plan on sleeping in” and shows a young man asleep under the covers, there is only one place that I can picture myself and that is at home in my bed. Whether it is six in the morning and I have to go running or it is half past noon and I am struggling to open my eyes, my mind repeats these words to my body in an attempt to stay passive.

This song conjures up an image of my small twin pillow-top mattress that sits on abnormally high box springs. When I am in this bed, with the exception of my head, a heavy sea of pastel blankets shelter me from the outside world. Wrapping up in the many blankets that make up the tapestry of my bed consists of crawling through many unusual layers. On top is the burnt red and forest green Spanish quilt from El Paso which covers the light blue goose down blanket. These two sheets mesh together to create a warm, heavy sensation that sheds the coldest nights. Under this top layer is the denim masterpiece that my mom made for me from six-by-six inch sheets of fabric from my old jeans. To conclude the bundle of blankets are my paper-thin sky blue bed sheets.

Snuggled underneath this wonderful haven I look out and survey the world through the branches of the ash tree in the front yard and tell myself that I have no plans other than sleeping in.

Death Cab For Cutie – I Will Follow You Into The Dark

In an innocence that fits Adams’ Watership Down, Death Cab For Cutie portrays a wonderful progression of love and innocence within the music video for I Will Follow You Into The Dark with an page by page artistic rendering of bunny rabbits.

These very same creatures that represent innocence and purity to some represent only suffering to me. At a very young age my allergy problems became apparent and while I figured I could do nothing about ragweed, pollen and cottonwood, one would assume that bunnies would be very simple to avoid. However, the only babysitter that I wanted to take care of me at that point in my life at about age 6 was one who had multiple rabbits at her house. Of course, rather than avoid these creatures altogether like I should have, I would rush into the house after school and sprint up to the bedroom that house the furry little rabbits. After removing them from the intricate red, yellow and blue piping system that had developed over the years I would smother them with all the love that a first-grader could muster. This involved feeding them carrots and bits of dried fruit and playing with them and generally rubbing their soft fur all across my skin just to enjoy their fleece-like coat.

Well allergies do not develop immediately and it was only once I had become best of friends with the gray, white, brown and black bunnies that I started to welt up with hives that pockmarked my skin horribly. Unfortunately my love for these innocent and amazing creatures can no longer be shared except at a distance or within the confines of Death Cab’s imaginative video.

The White Stripes – Fell In Love With A Girl

The White Stripes present one pivotal building block in my childhood within the video for Fell In Love With A Girl and that is the Lego. Such a simple invention of colorful interlocking pieces that can build literally anything fueled my childhood hours with endless fun.

I can pointedly recall nonstop hours spent in my musty basement building masterpieces upon a heavy wooden table. By sifting through the seemingly infinite supply of large plastic bins that were full of assorted colors and sizes of pieces my best friend and neighbor could construct scaled-down villages or battleships or space stations. The little popping noise that is so distinct to a Lego will always remain embedded in my brain. The epic scenes that were created from the fickle little pieces typically involved battlefields that ranged from galactic to underwater and very commonly included typical infantry warfare.

One particular battle included many airstrips loaded with various crafts that lined the couches and floor with plastic bunkers and bases strategically hidden behind the giant blue and red pillows that lay on opposite sides of the basement. Once the epic good guy versus bad guy conflict began there was nothing along the lines of earthly forces that could have kept those Lego blocks stuck together. More satisfying than creating with Legos was having the opportunity to ransack everything that had taken hours and hours to carefully construct. Wading through the wreckage that consisted of demolished building foundations and pieces scattered everywhere became natural in the Lego cycle. Looking at The Stripes’ video easily reminds me that in basements around the nation, children of all ages enjoyed Legos much like I did.

Sigur Ros – Saeglopur

The omni-present effect of water within Sigur Ros’ music video for their song Saeglopur, which is Icelandic for lost at sea, elicits nostalgia about anything water related. Most pointedly for myself the video causes me to recall the first time that I learned how to dive at my cousin’s pool.

The cement around the pool scorched one’s feet unless proper footwear was worn and the pool itself was crystal clear so that the diamond designs of the tile were visible from the surface of the “deep end”. The infamous deep end was the owner of the diving board and the water slide although the diving board in particular was my favorite aspect of the pool. The rough white stucco-like surface of the diving board held your feet fast in place while you bobbed slowly up and down on the end of the board. The slightly worn out springs of the board creaked faintly while the diver stood there bouncing and staring into the depth of the water.

Actually diving off of the board was an experience in itself. Since the board was rather short and could only produce a modest amount of restitution due to old age, one was often forced to start their take off back off of the board, near the fence. Properly attaining a running head start would result in maximum flexion of the springs and peak altitude was gained. The effect of floating through the air was long lived if the dive was executed properly and produced the end effect of floating through the water similar to the boy within Sigur Ros’ video, safely leading one to assume that the members of Sigur Ros enjoy water as much as anyone else.