C sharp or B flat

Imagine your whole life up to this moment. All of the places you’ve been, people you’ve met, experiences, sounds, sights that words cannot begin to describe. The foods, the smell that magically warps you back to an earlier time, the solitary moments – those of almost Zen-like stillness and those so terrible they shake the core of your existence. The teacher that struck a chord so deep it never existed until that moment of awakening. The sublime, the banal, the mundane, and the transcendental.

Now, which of these are so integral to you, so woven into the “you,” that if they were suddenly erased, you would be a different person?

There’s probably many. And there’s probably many that you don’t even know affected you so deeply. And there’s probably many that you would list that actually didn’t have as big an impact as you think.

Today I was coming back from the store and listening to music. For some reason, I started imagining that I was playing each of the songs to someone I didn’t know. A combination of wanting to impress this person and showcase important songs that meant something to me began to shape. This led me to think about songs and artists that were part of the fabric of “me;" music, if erased from my past, would inevitably change who I am today.

I’ve decided to put together a list of some of these songs. I’m hoping to break it down into several chapters consisting of about ten songs and a little about each one. It’s actually a lot harder than I thought it would be when I came up with the idea, to distill down to the songs that really fit. Hundreds of songs come to mind, but do they really mean so much that they helped shape who I am?  Well, let’s give it a shot. Probably not. It may end up being a shorter list than I imagined. The first chapter will follow as soon as I finish obsessing over the first list...