I'm the kind of person who associates songs (or maybe playlists or albums) with moments in life.
If you're one of those and you know me, then maybe you'll get a kick out of what is otherwise a personal, dear-diary moment of nostalgia.
Here goes: moments when the memory and the soundtrack both hit just right.
- Schooling the neighborhood boys in Goldeneye to The Prodigy's The Fat of the Land
- Late nights with IRC, Winamp and ICQ, to Aphex Twin
- Rolling to Fort Worth (for no reason whatsoever; there was nothing to do) with my cousin, to Thievery Corporation's The Mirror Conspiracy
- Rocket Arena 3 to Daft Punk's Homework
- Riding safely(?) in Alex's race-tuned Jetta to early Jamiroquai
- Rainy early summers to Olive
- Riding unsafely in a gamer friend's pickup from Quakecon to Whataburger, to Dzihan & Kamien
- Visiting a friend from high school choir in a faraway suburb to The Avalanches' Since I Left You
- Clearing my head while adjusting to college on fast drives through western Austin, to John Mayer's Heavy Things
- Falling head-over-heels to Common's Like Water For Chocolate
- Thinking of the guys and triumphant returns to dorm life, and a female bestie who's one of the guys, while walking around Spain to Jimmy Eat World and Jamiroquai's Dynamite
- Drives home from college, Austin to Dallas, late at night, in the amber glow of a 3-series, to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack
- Finishing a college thesis while thinking Lupe Fiasco was the first hip-hop that ever hit me personally
- Recovering from college hangovers to The Sushi Club
- Riding Tokyo Metro on a wide-eyed first visit, to Basement Jaxx's Crazy Itch Radio
- Driving a hilariously slow Japanese domestic Mitsubishi Mirage from dreary Shimane to sunny Hiroshima, to Bitter:Sweet
- Drives through the Dallas area from home to Tei-An, and to K-town, and to Addison and back home again, all on Saturday nights, all in a worn-out Mazda RX-8, to m-flo compilations and Funky DL's Blackcurrent Jazz 2
- Flying to Japan to Nujabes and the Lost in Translation soundtrack
- Working the hardest I've ever worked, with the Pacific Ocean tantalizingly close, to Basement Jaxx's Scars
- Crashing on Aroon's couch and seeing Silicon Valley life to M83's Midnight City
- Pumping myself up to stride in to work in Tokyo (what?! I did that?!), while visions of startups danced in my head, to Kaskade's remix of Samantha James' Waves of Change
- Walking through intolerably hot Tokyo summers to Funky DL's Nights in Nippon
- Building a startup with my brother to Bop Alloy's Save the Day
- Spending days walking through pouring rain in Kagoshima (it's a long story) to Utada
- Staggering home from another night of Tokyo drinks to Bop Alloy's The Boy With No Name
- Falling in love with a Japanese model to Late Night Alumni and Funky DL's From Street to Sweet
- Being a front-end developer for a living to The One-Ups
- Driving a Mini across Dallas in a gorgeous sunset to Eric's house, to the Supreme Beings of Leisure
- Returning to California, and the games industry, and landing a dream job, to Marcus D's Wax and Sonomad's self-titled album
- Discovering Amy Winehouse entirely too late, over the world's best cocktail (the old fashioned at Neighborhood Services), with Eric
- Recovering from an E3 hangover to The Super Soul Bros
- Flying to Japan to Nitsua
Wow. I may not be done with this list, but I am at a stopping point. I have an unbelievable amount of happy memories and adventures. If you're a friend who had anything to do with any part of this - the music or the adventure - I can't thank you enough.