D'Écriture - Sal Christ

This Is Your Song…

Personal soundtracks and mixtapes are intensely personal experiences—both in the making and in the listening. I’ve spent hours upon hours putting together mixes for others and mixes for myself, even if its merely for the hours upon hours I might trek through the city on foot or languish on a bicycle along the river that runs through our metropolis. Over time, certain songs become tightly threaded to certain individuals or moments or periods in one’s life.

In one of my recent columns for 303 Magazine, I briefly described the first time I ever listened to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon while driving to the city late one night—it was sublime in a way that language is incapable of doing justice; in short, I ended up high as a kite by the time I reached my destination without having imbibed a thing—all from listening to that record. Neither the memory nor the sensation has ever faded from memory.

Much like that drive all those years ago, I’ve attached songs and scores to people and moments I’ve shared with people…still, it’s the moments that never were and the songs that stain the helpless longing for what never came to be that haunt me most. We know these songs: tracks that set the tone for funerals and memorial services, whimsy that conjures memories out of the dust of years past, and musicians whose name plastered on a marquee instantly arouses the face of the deceased.

There remains one person in my life for whom there is no song. When living, he was my song and between us we shared a lifetime of tunes—too many to declare just one as his and just one as mine. In the decade since his passing, too many records have come and gone during the ups and downs of bereavement; grief and its music is a silent, internal thing—felt, but not spoken. I can pick off dozens of tracks whose notes served to guide through the unending nights and pushed through the days upon days upon days. There are songs for rebuilding, for celebrating, for passing the time…but these remain for my life and not his. 

So for now, he remains a song-less wonder and his memory a vast library of singles and EPs and soundtracks not originally released.

For those whose life has been touched with loss, what songs would you bequeath the dead? To give them a song of their own that would somehow honor who they were to you and yet honor the impact their memory has had on your life in the meantime?