A journey through the eyes of my itunes

I got my old Dell laptop back today. This laptop was the one I got in September of my freshman year of college with the scholarship money the City of Cambridge gave me. It was one of the first larger items of mail I had ever received, and it helped usher in a convoluted chapter of ups and downs.
On it, I downloaded tons of 90's R & B that I would sulk to in my dorm room my first semester in 2004. Monica soon welcomed Switchfoot-"I Dare You to Move" in the Spring of 2005. I remember listening to this and all of the contemporary christian music you could think of. In light of the culture I have come to know of indie-hipsters where turning against daddy's religion is key, this might sound a bit absurd. But at the time, these CCM artists (I learned the acronym recently) helped establish a cultural connection to this new culture I had discovered, of oriental scarves, going to the gym at 6am, sitting in the green grass between classes and sipping lattes at the former Claymore at 12:30 am every night.

Then came Common, John Legend and spoken word artists when I went back home to Cambridge that summer to try to make sense of the new culture I had found and it's relationship to my own context.

But then sophomore year rushed in at the end of August of 2005 and Mercedes Sosa was ready to help me deal with cultural identity. Marx was sitting on my desk-and I didn't just read him for class. My Dominican flag was my security blanket that helped me hang onto my roots as it hung from my dorm wall. Listening to the songs from Latin American revolutionaries singing through the Nueva Cancion Movement served as the soundtrack for my Latin American politics class and my participation in May Day 2006, rallying for immigration reform. The Rock en español that I had discovered in Dominican Republic that year took me through the angry moments that spring.

Junior year brought me Radiohead through an old boyfriend. Sufjan Stevens came flying through to speak to my more culturally heterogenous soul when I worked as a barrista at the small closet they called Claymore "If you have a father or if you haven't one, I'll do anything for you." And it all went downhill from there--or uphill.
Listening to the variety of music on my old itunes takes me back to these places. The smells of my apartment senior year in the basement of Ferrin. Flashbacks to getting ready to go to parties in Beverly, where I was more an observer than anything else-not quite sure if I was a full fledged participant quite yet. The colors of the tiles in the bathroom, the smells of cleaning product during times of extreme motivation-Jarabe de Palo bring me back. Laying in bed thinking about how I was going to get through it all during times of extreme difficulty-Lifehouse was the tear jerker.
The songs from different genres going one after another like a really awkward mixed CD take me to the activism, the optimism, the cultural questioning. It gives weight to my experience and reminds me of how profound these were. Even the Spanish Christian songs take me there-to times when I was more sure, but also to times when I was in tune with changing my bad habits or detrimental character traits. "Cancion de Sanidad": "Ven, saname Senor." These take me back to times of profound prayer, of crying out, to the times of absolute desperation and to times of absolute elation.

They remind me of the incredible transformation that has taken place in the last 5 years. And to top it all off, there's a spoken word piece in there that I had written for my friend's communication class at Emerson College in 2008. It was all about my journey from Dominican chain-wearing days to the whole foods shopping and cafe going days.
Crazy. Cathartic.




It makes me think....
When I look back I feel that I have gained so much, that I am empowered in a way I had never been. I feel that I have climbed a really tall tree or something and now can see that when I was so sure that the world consisted of three roads and 1,000 trees, it might have atleast 300 roads and 10,000 trees, if not more. In fact, I'm sure that I have more trees to climb and that there are more roads and trees to see that I do not have access to now.
It makes me think of this idea that salvation lies in tapping into these universal principles that break us free and help us to transcend our previous limitations or at least to understand them more fully. Now, there a whole new set of limitations and I'm excited to keep climbing.