Listen Up...

Given that Bowdoin is a school relatively isolated from any city life and arts culture, I often find myself artistically uninspired. While I don’t have any concrete solutions to this problem, I’d like to try and create a forum in which I can share my various artistic inspirations.

One of my high school English teachers once gave my class an assignment to make a “Top Ten” list of anything that we were passionate about; I chose to do my top ten favorite songs. Music intensifies my high when I’m happy, calms me down when I’m upset, comforts me when I’m scared, and entertains me when I’m bored. I was going to share 10 of my favorite songs with you, but apparently I have a lot more to say about each of the songs than I thought, so I’ll start out with four:

"Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley

This song is about everything and anything. It’s about beauty, pain, relationships, struggle, and hope. It’s about a vain attempt at appealing to faith, to God, to love, to trying to beat the system, when all you’ve ever been met with was injustice and failure. It’s about accepting life at face value, while also commenting on surrendering. It’s about reaching peace while acknowledging sadness. The momentous chords and soothing melody carry me away and clear my head.

"Like a Rolling Stone (How Does it Feel?)" by Bob Dylan

I cherish this song most for its applicability. I find it almost impossible to believe that there is someone out there who at some point in his/her life cannot relate to this song. It expresses how difficult it is to honestly get to know others and the challenge of being able to truly understand how others feel. It explains how we make our way through life on our own, and how unique our experiences are because of this. While this song can be depressing given that it reminds me of the loneliness of being an individual, it is also uplifting in that it expresses the universality of this loneliness.

"It's Only Fear" by Alexi Murdoch

This song has impacted me over the last year because it has provided me with reassurance given my recent struggle to motivate myself and reach my goals. In dealing with my anxiety, and fear of failure, this song, and its lyrics, have made me realize that I can overcome anything, and that being afraid merely creates unnecessary obstacles. It demonstrates how we make things appear more frightening than they actually are, and that life isn’t as scary as it seems. Sometimes it’s important to remind yourself that failure is often better than not trying at all. This song should serve as a reminder to prevent oneself of letting fear get in the way of experiencing life.

"You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals

As corny as this sounds, this is one of my favorite songs as a result of an experience I had in the Baxter basement. Last spring semester, on the night of the last day of exams, there was an impromptu dance party in the Baxter basement. Great friends surrounded me, everyone was in a good mood, and it was finally starting to feel like summer. Sometimes there is nothing better than feel-good music and dancing. The song is about being a dreamer. While it’s not particularly enlightening, it has some of my favorite lyrics. I suggest you jam out to this song whenever you’re dragging. As the song says: “Don’t let go, you’ve got the music in you; one dance left, this world is gonna pull through.”

I hope you enjoy at least one of these songs as much as I do. I’d love to hear your feedback. In the meantime, you can find me nestled in the corner of the library listening to such songs on my iPod!