For the Record

Author: Emily Temple

It's the second week of November, and panic is setting in. Super seniors have a dismally short chunk of time broken up by Thanksgiving and Christmas to squeeze whatever they can out of Middlebury before being thrust back into the cold - and in February, it will be cold - world from whence they came. We're starting to get sad, starting to relive the past, think about how we've changed and wonder if we did everything right. Or at least I am.

This past weekend, I systematically went through all the photographs I took from the very first day of my first semester up until the present. Inspired, I proceeded to look at my iTunes library by date, revisiting the songs I added years ago. People say smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. For me, the strongest memories have always been steeped in music. Think about the albums you played four years ago - at parties, in the car, when attempting romance. Think about the songs you listened to seventeen times a day for two weeks and then never heard again. Our choices have necessarily changed so much, but hearing even the first few notes of a particular song can throw us into a place we've forgotten, sometimes a place we can't even quite recall, except for a strange familiar feeling in our stomachs. As someone who feels the need to constantly soundtrack my life, the most important events in my life have very particular background music. I turned sixteen to Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, I spent my Feb semester in Paris wandering around to the full gift box set of Elliott Smith's albums and last fall all my nights revolved around remixes. And while those moments are gone, they can be instantly summoned with a click of the mouse.

On Friday night, I found myself alone with my two very first friends at Middlebury, both of whom have, most fortunately for me, remained among my closest throughout our four years. Sitting in my apartment and talking about the "old" days, we all had the same, slightly embarrassing impulse - to listen to the Postal Service. Long ago, the three of us had bonded over Ben Gibbard, a common obsession we discovered in each other before even arriving at Middlebury. Like all anxious Febs in the last months before finally getting to college, we were desperate to get as close as possible to the experience, and so we stalked each other's Facebook profiles to an unprecedented extent. I admit to searching for bands I liked at the time to identify potential friends, and Ben Gibbard was one that turned up the three of us. We sent out feelers. One complimented me on the Wilco lyrics in my profile, one listed a band I was sure no one else had ever heard of, and it turned out that those weren't the only things we had in common. Cue long rides, dissecting Death Cab for Cutie lyrics, singing along to the Rent soundtrack in parts, pontificating on the many virtues of Ben Folds and sheepishly writing songs for each other. Oh, give us a break, we were freshmen.

Now, mired in the tyranny of the cool, we're over Rent, we're over the Bens, we're over practically everything we thought was rad four years ago (except, like, Neutral Milk Hotel and Elliott Smith). But now, when the end is so near, we think about the beginning, and turn on "Light My Candle," doing the parts just for kicks. And when the song ends, we let it go to the next one, because well, if you can't listen to nerdy, high school-era music you'd be embarrassed to admit to ever loving and sing along with every note at the top of your lungs with your best friends from college, what have you been doing with your time here?