David & Christine: Audio Scrapbook
Jul 31 '05 (Updated Jun 23 '06)
The Bottom Line As my wedding approaches, I've taken the time to look back at some important songs from various points in our relationship so far.
Folks, please indulge me for a bit here. I'm getting married in less than a week, and it's occurred to me that despite all of the offhand mentions of my love interest/girlfriend/fiancee as part of anecdotes in reviews I've written, I've never taken the time out to write a more personal but music-related column about our relationship. Music is a key thing in my life, a pointer to important experiences and wonderful memories as I grow older. Looking back at key songs that have been important to us at one point or another is a way of remembering where we've been, what God brought us through, and where we stand now as we prepare to get married. So it only makes sense to document that for you, my extended Epinions family, to get a peek at our relationship, music review style.
We can play pretend for a minute if you like. Pretend you're one of my close "real-world" friends instead of just virtual people whose reviews I rate by clicking a button. Pretend you got an invitation to our wedding and it gave you an excuse to jet off on a dream vacation to Hawaii so that you could celebrate with us. You'd show up dressed in aloha attire, be there to witness our union in a beautiful botanical garden setting on Oahu's windward side, and after enjoying the good food and ohana, you'd head home with a wedding favor - a mix CD containing 20 of the songs that are most important to us as a couple. And you'd be listening to that CD, wondering why we picked these songs and why they're significant to us. Well, this column is here to offer that insight.
1. "Love Travels", Ceili Rain (Ceili Rain, 1998)
It'll fly through the air with the greatest of ease
As much as you want now, as much as you need
Across every mountain and all seven seas
The eagles'll carry it on God's gentle breeze...
While this one was originally written for country artist Kathy Mattea, the Celtic-influenced rock band Ceili Rain chose to record it for themselves on their self-titled debut album. It's a song that blends bagpipes and Irish flutes and all manner of celebratory instrumentation in an atmosphere of celebration despite the agony of separation from a loved one. It's a promise that love can still be felt even when the other person isn't physically be present. This was an important song during the first few months that my fiancee and I knew each other. We had met on the Internet, and developed a pretty strong friendship connection through all of our Yahoo! chatting and phone conversations, eventually realizing that we were somewhat nervous about meeting in person because we might end up having romantic feelings for each other. We turned out to when she came to California to visit family and we had the chance to interact face-to-face, and this left us with a real fear of how we were going to maintain and further explore that interest with her living in Hawaii and me over here on the mainland. I wanted a way to promise her that the distance wouldn't keep us from giving this relationship a fair shot, and these words provided a great way to do that.
2. "Waiting for the Summer", Delirious? (Audio: Lessonover, 2001)
I see you smile, you're not living for this life
Innocence, you remind us how it can be right
And you make me free
Come away, our dreams will be...
I thought this song was pure cheese when I first heard it, but that was in 2001 when I was bitter about a previous relationship rapidly going downhill. As the summer of 2002, and my trip to Oahu to visit Christine approached, I looked forward to it and found this sunny, la-la-la-filled song to perfectly describe our upcoming week together in paradise. I was getting to know Christine as a person who, despite having her worries and insecurities, always had something to say to me that was encouraging, and that ultimately pointed me back to God. That really appealed to me, and once I got a taste of it, I couldn't wait to see her again.
3. "Same Side of the Moon", Corrinne May (Corrinne May, 2001)
I picture you across the ocean
In your corner of the world
I pray the wind will blow my voice
And gently whisper in your ear...
A very mellow acoustic song by one of our favorite independent artists, the Singapore-bred Corrinne May, also deals with the difficulty of a long-distance relationship. We weren't quite on opposite sides of the world (Hawaii is only a 3-hour time difference from California, and sometimes 2 because they're smart and don't do Daylight Savings Time!), but the sentiment of feeling the endlessness of the ocean separating us still fit, and the keen observation made in this song is that the moon is something we have in common, something we can both see and know that the other person can see as well. (If you're a physics/astronomy geek, you'll know that to be true because the rotation of both bodies is synchronous, so all of us really are seeing the same side of it). This is a beautiful song that I've taken great pains to figure out how to finger-pick by watching Corrinne play it in concert a few times (before she switched to piano and made this task impossible, of course).
4. "Oxygen", Avalon (Oxygen, 2001)
The air is thick, the flower sweet
The shadow comes down
Tonight the moon is at my feet
And I breathe You in
I breathe You in to me...
Christine liked a lot of the poppier side of Christian music when she first met - she still does, and as long as a person is willing to expand their horizons, there's nothing wrong with that. Avalon was a group that I knew early on we both liked, so I bought her this CD as a present when I came to visit her in June 2002. The entire album still reminds me of that first visit when we "officially" became a couple, but this particular song, which is more acoustic and organic than Avalon's usual fare, happened to be playing when we came out of the tunnel where Likelike Highway (that's "Lee-kay-lee-kay", though some folks like to say "Leaky-leaky") cuts through the mountains on the way from Honolulu to Kaneohe. Emerging on that side of the island and just seeing the intense greenery growing on the sharp cliff walls just embedded this song in my mind, as a celebration of the kiss of life that God breathed into that Hawaiian islands, making them a gorgeous and highly romantic setting for a blossoming relationship like ours.
5. "Even If", ZOEgirl (Life, 2001)
Landed in the middle of the desert
And I'm wondering why, what keeps me alive
When the water I drink and the air that I breathe is dry...
Getting into the dance-pop girl trio ZOEgirl was my way of investigating Christine's world and showing her that I could find music relevant to her. I was surprised at how much I ended up being impressed with the group, both on CD and due to their determination in a live setting. They were the very first artist that we saw perform at our very first concert together, Fish Fest 2002 in Irvine, California, and this was the first song of their set. I had to commend them for recreating their somewhat programmed songs with a live band, and for pulling off their dance maneuvers on a very hot stage in the middle of July. It was music that both of us could really enjoy for guiltless reasons.
6. "Million Pieces (Kissin' Your Cares Goodbye)", Newsboys (Thrive, 2002)
Why you holdin' grudges in old jars?
Why you wanna show off all your scars?
What's it gonna take to lay a few burdens down?
It's a beautiful sound...
Also a strong memory from that year's Fish Fest, this Newsboys song marked a care-free moment where I just decided to let go of my worries about how our relationship was going to progress during the long separation ahead (she had come to see me for her birthday in August, but I knew I wouldn't see her again until after Christmas), and about how tired I was going to be at work the next morning, and to just live in the moment and let God deal with the hard stuff. Worry is an ongoing problem in my life, and Christine often has to remind me of what I can control and what's out of my hands, so that I can relax and not freak out. Those few moments of clarity where everything lines up and I can see that I don't need to know the answers are what keep me sane in life, and I kept returning to this bouncy, highly singable song as a reminder of that lesson that I continually needed to re-learn.
7. "Sadie Hawkins Dance", Relient K (The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek, 2001)
Scan the cafeteria for some good seating
I found a good spot by the cheerleaders eating
The quarterback asked me if I'd like a beating
I said, "That's one thing I won't be needing"...
I also got to introduce Christine to some of the rockier end of the spectrum of music that I enjoyed at Fish Fest - in particular, the silly pop-punk band Relient K. There is perhaps no better introduction to the band's persona than this highly infectious number with its high-pitched "oh-oh-oh!"s and its amusing story about a shy high school kid who delights in learning that a "girl so stunning" is actually going to ask him to an upcoming dance. I tend to meet a lot of traditional women who believe very strongly that the guy should always be the one to ask the girl out, and I'll admit it that sometimes we guys need to be brave and step up. But at the same time, isn't it nice when the traditional tables are turned and a girl can just go up and declare to a guy how she feels about him and not have it looked upon as strange, or have it be intimidating to the guy? That's what Christine did with me. She laid her cards on the table first, and it was risky, but if she had never done it, we might not be together today.
8. "I'm a Believer", Smash Mouth (Shrek Soundtrack, 2001)
I thought love was more or less a giving thing
The more I gave, the less I got, oh yeah
What's the use in trying, all you get is pain
When I needed sunshine, I got rain...
This one is apparently Christine's favorite song (or a remake of her favorite song, since it was originally recorded by The Monkees). I actually didn't know it was her favorite until I answered the question incorrectly on a quiz I was given, which she also had to answer at her bridal shower! But I always knew that she loved it. I put it as the first track on one of many mix CD's that I sent to her during the long-distance phase of our relationship, and she would love to put it on and dance around her living room, reveling in the lyrics that speak of the effect newfound love can have on a hardened cynic. (I'd be the cynic in this relationship, not her, but she's softened me quite a bit.)
9. "Beautiful Day", U2 (All that You Can't Leave Behind, 2000)
You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace...
Sometimes you just need a slamming, upbeat, and happy rock song to jump-start your mood and give you something to celebrate. We wanted a U2 song in the mix somewhere, but it's honestly difficult to find a good romantic U2 song. They've written songs on romance, but a lot of them are about the agony and general messed-up-ness of love between fallible humans. A great topic, but we wanted something a little more optimistic, so we went with a more general celebratory song. I tend to associate this song with Christine's arrival in California, which was a few days before Easter 2003. Tired as I was from all of our adventures during her first few days of California residency (that's right, she left her island comfort zone to live out here in California and be near me), I still managed to make it to sunrise service that Easter, during which our church's pastor blasted this song over the loudspeakers at 6 in the morning, heralding the good news of the Resurrection that comes after a long and intense period of mourning following the seemingly impossible setback of Christ's death (which hardcore U2 fans will know correlates to the not-so-happy "Wake Up Dead Man" from the previous album). Man, I love our church. And I love that Christine was welcomed as part of it upon her arrival.
10. "Melody of You", Sixpence None the Richer (Divine Discontent, 2002)
You're a painting with symbols deep, a symphony
Soft as it shifts from dark beneath
A poem that flows, caressing my skin
In all of these things you reside...
In my mind, this beautifully hand-picked and string-brushed song is the perfect synthesis of art and worship. The angelic Leigh Nash sings very poetic words that describe God as an artist gradually creating the person that she is becoming, and she in turn devotes herself to singing the melody that God creates. Christine fell in love with this song, and during those first few months when I would play anything I had recently figured out how to play on my guitar for her, this would be on of her frequent requests. I see our relationship - or, at least, the ideal that I have for it, as being a synthesis of art and worship as well. We want it to glorify God, and to do so creatively, and while romance and marriage can seem like selfish pursuits at first glance, we hope that these things can simply be pointers to how God loves us.
11. "Twenty-Four", Switchfoot (The Beautiful Letdown, 2003)
Twenty-four voices, with twenty-four hearts
All of my symphonies, in twenty-four parts
But I want to be one today, centered and true
I'm singing, "Spirit take me up in arms with You"...
Christine and I are very scattered people at times. We can have a million thoughts running off in different directions, and it's very hard to feel centered and focused on where God is leading us as a couple, as much as we say we want that for our relationship. We're big fans of Switchfoot - their House of Blues show in June 2003 was definitely one of the best concerts we've ever attended together. Man, there was nothing like singing the interweaving lyrics of this song in rounds with the band and a small legion of fans, filling the room with little other than our voices and a lone guitar. Jon Foreman wrote the song on the eve of his twenty-fourth birthday, and Christine and I both turned from 24 to 25 that year, so it kind of became an anthem of growing older and hopefully becoming more focused.
12. "Harbor", Vienna Teng (Warm Strangers, 2004)
Fear is the brightest of signs
The shape of the boundary you leave behind
So sing all your questions to sleep
The answers are out there in the drowning deep...
I love this song because it's an unabashed song of encouragement, but it also gives the person it's encouraging a little push to move beyond their comfort zone. It's also probably the most effortlessly floating pop song ever to use such complex time signatures and still be rather radio-friendly, so for that, I have to commend Vienna Teng for her genius. (We might have never discovered Vienna if not for a gig where Corrinne May opened for her, at an obscure Orange County college in 2003, which we went to great lengths to get to.) It's another ocean-themed song - these songs just keep finding their way to us - that basically says to the other person, "Go out and have your adventures and become something greater than you are, and I will always be here when you need a safe place to return to." It's an example of unselfish love, and as Christine and I were developing our relationship as a couple, I also delighted in how she was growing in her own right, learning to be an independent woman in an increasingly frenzied world. I felt that the best way for me to love her would be to empower her to do the things that were unfamiliar to her and familiar to me, instead of just doing everything for her.
13. "Gotta Go Through", Christine Dente (Becoming, 2003)
This unfamiliar terrain, no umbrella for the rain
And we're reaching for each other again...
This song really explains the crux of what has held our relationship together over the three years that we've been dating. Things didn't immediately turn to bliss the minute Christine arrived in California. She had to find housing, and a job to support herself, and these things proved to be quite temporary and stressful at first when she did manage to find them. I hated it at the time, questioning what God was doing to us and why it had to be so hard. But there was a pivotal moment, when she was just about fed up with the fruitless searching, and ready to pack her things and go back to Hawaii, effectively ending the relationship. She chose instead to stay and tough it out, and things ended up turning around for her. Her determination to stick with it through the hard stuff was what really won her over and showed me the true potential for marriage that our relationship had. This song by Christine Dente (half of the duo Out of the Grey, whose music we've both loved for over ten years now) affirms how trials can strengthen a relationship noting that during those times, "tripping together is better than falling apart".
14. "Maybe Tomorrow", Nouveaux (...And This Is How I Feel, 1996)
I said a prayer for you today
May troubles be far away
And I'll be here on bended knee
Until the day you say you'll marry me...
I'll admit that Christine was far from the first woman to receive this song from me on a romance-themed mix. I've used it ever since I've discovered it to communicate my longing to find that special someone, or my gratitude when I think I've finally found her. Despite its overuse (and hey, it's a wonderful acoustic rock song that is almost universally relatable, can you blame me?), it ended up on our wedding CD because it's the song I played to propose to Christine. Odd choice, I know, because it's a song that speaks about a guy's dream woman as someone he hasn't even met yet, but I framed it as a song about wishes fulfilled, with the exception of the line, "Until the day you say you'll marry me", which I asked her to do upon completing the song. Getting to that point was the hard part, as financial difficulties last summer postponed my purchase of an engagement ring, and there were also a few snafus in planning the trip to Catalina Island, an island significant to my personal history that she hadn't seen yet, where I planned to ask her to marry me. We finally went in late September 2004, and I intentionally made no specific plans of an itinerary for our first day there, or exactly when or where I would propose. I had heard to many horror stories of guys spending the entire day in agony, hoping their plans went exactly right, and if we've learned anything in our relationship, nothing we've planned will go "exactly right". I trusted my instincts and improvised, picking a quiet moment back at the Bed & Breakfast we were staying at, and I just picked up my guitar and told her I had a song for her. Surprisingly, my nerves were calm, and she didn't break into tears or freak out or do anything hysterical - she just looked at me with that happy grin that said, "He finally asked!" and confidently responded, "Yes".
15. "Show You Love", Jars of Clay (Who We Are Instead, 2003)
So tie me to a tree, and let the smoke and ash collect
No, I won't regret to let love do what love will let
We can drown in mixed emotions, or walk across an angry sea
This is the cost of being free...
Picking a single Jars of Clay song to represent "us" on this disc was also a daunting task - there are just too many that are special to both of us. I could have gone with "Like a Child", my personal theme song, but that one doesn't really describe her. I could have gone with "Scarlet", which describes my gratitude at being accepted by her despite her knowledge of my mistakes in a previous relationship. But I eventually went with "Show You Love", because it's one of those songs that describes love as sacrifice and not just some fuzzy feeling that God grants to us. It's an action word, an act of pouring out and really giving yourself to another person. It seems we've learned that the hard way at times, but I don't think it'd be a real relationship without some blood, sweat, and tears put into it.
16. "Saturday", Olivia the Band (Olivia the Band, 2005)
Sun is sinking, air is cooling, day is dying, night arriving
Whitewash, ocean waves, no place I'd rather be
No wind, no crowds, only friends out
This is our home, this is North Shore...
We love Hawaii, and so does Olivia the Band, a happy pop-punk outfit from Oahu's North Shore. We had to put a song on the disc that was simply about Hawaii and the laid-back, life-affirming spirit that the islands inspire in those who visit. We actually saw the band live in their hometown, Haleiwa, and it left our ears ringing. Visit their website and check out the video for this song to get a snapshot of what life is like there.
17. "Over the Rainbow", Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (Alone in Iz World, 2001)
Someday I'll wish upon a star
Wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
High above the chimney top, that's where you'll find me...
We decided to follow up with another "Hawaii song", this time from a singer who is recognized as one of the iconic figures in Hawaiian music. The late Bruddah Iz makes some interesting choices on this ukulele-driven cover of the Judy Garland song from The Wizard of Oz, munging the lyrics a bit but, shifting the chords in interesting ways to give it an island vibe that really works with the dreamy nature of the song. I just love the way he enunciates "chim-a-ney-top". Many of you will recognize this one from the closing credits of 50 First Dates, and we've actually chosen it as the "exit music" for the end of the wedding ceremony.
18. "All I Need", Sara Groves (The Other Side of Something, 2004)
Newly married, new apartment
All our furniture was saved from the dump
Yes dear, maybe can afford a trashcan next month...
With all of the mushy songs about romance and the serious songs about wanting to be closer to God on this CD, we had to lighten the mood a little bit with a humorous song. Enter Sara Groves, with this witty take on the life of the newly married couple dealing with middle-aged suburbia and all of the expectations that come with it. You get married, and at first you might have to get used to hardly having jack squat to your name, just each other's love to pull you through. Then you mature and your job status improves, and suddenly you take pride in having stuff. And People like to see that you have stuff, and you want more stuff to feel like you're a good and entertaining host when they come to visit you with casseroles in hand. And before you know it - BAM, you've found a gateway drug into hardcore materialism, and the chase to keep up with the Joneses is consuming you and rubbing off on your kids. Yeah, it's pretty scary, but Sara Groves makes it sound pretty hilarious on this witty little song about needing just that one more thing to be happy. It just never ends!
19. "Murlough Bay", Iona (Beyond These Shores, 1993)
Here we can bathe in a love that's divine
Here we can know, I am yours, you are mine
Here in your arms that are faithful and strong
Here with you, this is where I belong...
This majestic ballad from the highly underrated Celt-prog-jazz-rock band Iona never fails to move me. It's one of those songs that grabs me on so many levels because it's about traveling to a secret place with someone you love, enjoying the beauty of it, and just being on your own with no distractions. It's also about finding solitude with God in such a place - you could read it either way. We chose this as the song for our first dance because it's intimate and romantic in a very classy way, and when the instruments all come crashing in during the bridge, there simply aren't many euphoric musical moments that can compare to it in my mind. It's an unorthodox choice for a first dance, to be sure (and we need to practice because we haven't yet done even a simple slow dance together!), but it's just one of those songs that I always knew I'd want played at my wedding. It even inspired me to start using the screen name "murlough23" when I needed to come up with a handle that didn't involve my actual name for the singles website where I ended up first meeting Christine. I've since gone on to use it in many other places, so the word "Murlough" (actually a place in Ireland) has kind of become an online identity for me. That's how much I love the song.
20. "How Could I Ask for More", Cindy Morgan (Real Life, 1991)
So many things I thought would bring me happiness
Some dreams that are realities today
Such an irony, the things that mean the most to me
Are the memories that I've made along the way...
I wanted to end with a song that invoked the kind of memories for Christine that "Murlough Bay" invoked for me. She's loved this song for many years, actually introducing me to it even though I was an existing Cindy Morgan fan. She actually sang it at a party for her high school graduation, and the way it looks back at trials endured and memories cherished kind of makes it one of those perennial favorites that you can pull out and feel like it's aged quite gracefully. Even though I haven't yet attached the song to my own memories, it's difficult to avoid tearing up when I hear the graceful transition between these last two songs on the CD - the sense of gratitude in this one is just too overwhelming, and I know that's the emotion we're just going to be consumed in on our wedding day.
There were other songs that I thought described us well, but that we couldn't fit on the CD, or that Christine thought might lose other people regarding their context. Nina Gordon's "2003" was a big one for us while Christine was anticipating her move to California, because it's a song that talks about two lovers being reunited in 2003 (that one obviously has a shelf-life for most listeners). Alanis Morissette's "Out Is Through" is a key song for me, because it really describes how a deepened appreciation for a person can be forged through struggle, but I thought it might be weird to have a song with the word "damned" in it on the project. And finally, just because I like to ease tension by making fun of myself, "White Trash Wedding" by the Dixie Chicks was a stress reliever for me last summer when I couldn't afford no ring, but I didn't exactly want folks thinking that our parents didn't approve of the marriage, that it took a nip of gin to get me to the altar, or that we already had a baby on its way. Oh well, I'm happy with the songs that we chose, and I hope that they've given some of you folks a little insight into who we are.
Well, the next time you hear from this Epinionator, he'll be a married man. So, wish me luck as I prepare to walk down the aisle and pledge the rest of my life to the one woman who can manage to keep me in line.
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Epinions.com ID:
divad23
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Member: David Martin
Location: Pasadena, CA
Reviews written: 573
Trusted by: 263 members
About Me:
Just add an implicit "in my humble opinion" to every sentence I write.
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