crazier than shirttails

150 Favorite Songs, #150: Thinking Of A Dream I Had, The Walkmen.

And when you’re coming around you’ll be sorry for the things you said.

I think sharing music with someone — listening to songs together, making tapes, going to shows, and even just talking about your favorite songs — is probably the second most intimate thing two people can share, and the most important, for me, when it comes to memory. When I look back on former relationships and closest friendships, the first thing that comes to mind in pretty much every case is “what music did we share together?” I’ve loved The Walkmen for almost ten years, but in my memories they now live very firmly five years ago, when I decided to forego adulthood for awhile and spent an entire summer eating boxes of sugar cookies, wrestling, and talking about superheroes. We listened to The Walkmen in his shitty car, saw The Walkmen play and shook our heads violently around, and we would sit in the almost-completely-unfurnished apartment he lived in listening to songs like “Thinking Of A Dream I Had,” staring at the ground, probably both thinking about other people a lot of the time. It was the only relationship (and later, friendship) I ever had where the other person seemed as aware of music’s place in our legacy as I was, and the music we listened to together felt very intentional, as if we both knew that we were creating a story for our brains to tell us later, and we wanted it to be sure it was a good one. We listened to My Bloody Valentine, Explosions In The Sky, Dinosaur Jr, Gillian Welch, Neil Young— things that were romantic and pretty and cryptic and much, much deeper than our relationship really was. But even though we did it on purpose, this song still makes me think of a dream I had.

Maybe you’re right.