My Favorite Song.

If this is where memories are made, well Dreams do come true Everything I ever took for granted I want to see it through I step through every shade Any color you bring This time, this time, this time Is fine just as it is Today is whatever I want it to mean.

Central Reservation was song 10 on a mix CD I made in the spring of 2002. Song 1 Was Badly Drawn Boy, song 3 was Radiohead song 4 was Coldplay, song 5 was Morcheeba and song 9 was David Gray. Those were the songs I played the most, flipping quickly between them in my car as they played on my brand new CD player.
Only a couple months earlier I had bought a CD player after not having one for almost 7 years; it was just something I never needed. The only time I really listened to music was when I was at my computer which would play CD's, not to mention I could download music and listen to it on my computer. This was my strange version of simplicity. Soon after buying the CD player I began burning every song I had downloaded onto CD. There were literally thousands and thousands of songs on my hard drive, everything from Dean Martin to Chopin to early acoustic John Mayer and rare live Beatles tracks. I had everything David Gray ever recorded, hundreds of Jeff Buckleys and U2's and even Sarah Harmer's limited release first album. By purchasing a CD player I was repenting many sins against the entertainment industry, vowing to actually start paying for music, conceding to society's rehabilitation for music pirates. I was also afraid of going to prison for file sharing.
Somewhere in the mix I had downloaded Central Reservation. I'd never listened to Beth Orton, she was just another file to me, I simply double-clicked her name and forgot about her. A year earlier someone I used to work with had seen her perform when he vacationed in Scotland and had said she was "pretty good." His review didn't interest me enough to listen to her, let alone buy her album. While compiling a CD of moody music, I threw one of her songs in a mix with a bunch of British rockers without ever listening to her, just for kicks.
On a beautiful Wednesday night a month or so later I drove to San Francisco to see friends. I was listening to track 9 end when I approached the toll booth for the bridge and as I paid I let the song 10 start, one I had never listened to, a song I was completely unaware of. This is what I remember: driving across the Bay Bridge as the sun was just dipping into the water, looking over at the city as lights began to flicker on, driving into the Yerba Buena Island tunnel, looking up at a banner that read, "Ride your bike to work!" The tunnel was dark and crowded and as I drove out, back into the setting sunlight, I heard the words, "Everything I ever took for granted/I want to see it through." The lyrics and the music pulled at my heart, filling me up with a strange energy. I wanted to take hold of life when I heard that song, it made me want to live. I repeated the song as I drove downtown, up Columbus to North Beach, listening to Beth Orton say, "Everything I ever took for granted/I want to see it through."
I was wearing a pair of khaki capris that day with a black tank top and a denim jacket. My hair was blonde and pulled back in a pony tail and I wore MAC Lipglass. We went to a bar in North Beach and then ate pizza across the street. I drove home intoxicated, listening to this song over and over and over. I drove home unconscious of everything, of the drive, of the hour I spent in the car listening to the same song. I drove home happy, and started preparing for a trip to Costa Rica. While I was there I decided that I was ready to start seeing through everything I'd ever said I might do. I came home from Costa Rica and, while at my computer listening to Central Reservation, requested an application from the College of Charleston.
A year later I moved to a little city by the ocean, but now it's a different ocean. I cross a different bridge almost every day and think of April a year and a half ago, driving into San Francisco, feeling my heart pulled by something much bigger than what I was aware of. That is what music should do to us.