If Music Be the Food of Love...

When it comes to identity, there are so many things people latch onto in an effort to help define themselves. For whatever reason, music is the most powerful of these identifiers. People are affected by music, people associate specific emotions and times of their life with certain albums.

I have never really felt that way about music.

To be sure, there are songs I like and dislike, songs whose lyrics I appreciate and enjoy on a deeper level than aesthetic enjoyment of the lyricist's craft. I can hear songs and instantly associate them with a specific time frame, whether college, high school or earlier. But for the most part, I lack any kind of a deeper emotional connection to songs. I don't have a song that encapsulates everything about me, a signature karaoke song, if you will. I don't have a breakup song. I don't think I've had "relationship" songs; we did have some, but I think they got carried over to her future relationships, and honestly (I'm trying very hard to avoid the tone of this getting bitter, as I'm not. Of course, protestations of non-bitterness tend to be the first sign of being bitter), she can keep them if she's that attached to them.

Is it possible that I really do have these kinds of songs, that I emotionally edit myself and my history to avoid them? Of course it is. So much of my history is forgotten, probably compartmentalized; I've always had a vague sense of not really existing, of having no history, of being liable to dissolve into mist the instant someone touches me, because there seems to be so much of my life I cannot remember. Perhaps that is why I am so apt to pour myself into relationships, and why I tend to be attracted to more aggressive, dominating women; I seek (or had sought; I definitely try to avoid this these days. Not necessarily the attraction, as you can't help that, but the seeking) definition and meaning for myself from another person.

When I was younger, my father didn't listen to a whole lot of music. I remember we had a record player in Brantford, but not much music; certainly very little of the pop variety. The only music I remember being played was by this wannabe crooner named Roger Whittaker. I think my dad liked him. There was one song in particular I can remember, about a father who had gone off to war (the Second one), and the letters he wrote back to his wife, seen from the perspective of their child. The song ends with a letter from one of the father's platoon mates, telling of the father's death.

I seem unable to find this song. I'm not even sure what its title is; I would assume 1944 or something along those lines, since that factors into the chorus ("It was ninteen hundred and forty four; papa went off to war"). I wonder what hearing it today would do to me. Would I break down into sobs for a childhood I never really knew and can't seem to remember? Would I be struck by what a terrible song it was, and feel ashamed for liking it?

Would I feel nothing at all?