Gym Class Heroes, “The Queen and I”: This video comes complete with mythical characters and castles that any little girl who grew up watching Disney movies can relate to. Strewn across the video are jokers complete with bells and food being thrown at them, Robin Hood and his green tights, a knight in shining silver armor wielding a sword, a wizard with his purple robes and magic, and of course a queen and her diamond crown. These characters bring back the mythical days of my childhood when I would spend hours in my family’s pink barbie house acting out scenes of damsels in distress and a poor maid who secretly was a princess. While my barbie house was not a real castle it did come complete with a kitchen and a table. The actual house was pink with a green roof that was made of plastic, which would pop inward if you sat on it. The little white door had a window and a handle that was sticky from all the little messy fingers that touched it. Inside there was a table that attached to the wall and could transform into an ironing table if you so choose and right next to the table was a little sink to wash dishes in or cram small objects down. While my castle has now turned into a cramped dorm room I share with someone else, my imagination still remains intact, as I still catch myself daydreaming about other things rather than focusing in class or studying for tests.
Death Cab for Cutie, “A Lack of Color”: In the video dark meaningless lines are being scribbled onto a white background slowing forming random pictures right in front of the audience’s eyes. This is exactly what would go on during church when I was little and could not sit still in the uncomfortably hard, medal seats. My sister would take a pen from my mother’s purse and we would begin to scribble on the bulletin pamphlets that would be handed out when people walked into church. She would scrawl a few lines and hand the paper off to me while I tried to decipher a picture among the meaningless lines on the paper. In a matter of seconds I would have a picture of a bird sitting on a tree branch, or a drawing of a stick figure doing a cartwheel. Now it would be my sister’s turn to be the artist and I would try to sketch complex lines so that it would be challenging for her to create a picture. It would always take her a few minutes to come up with a picture, but they would always be neatly drawn with every line having a purpose while my drawings were always untidy and swiftly put together. We would always giggle loudly while we looked at our imaginative artwork as my mother would shoot glares at us to be quiet. My sister and I would never know what our pastor happened to be discussing those Sunday mornings, but hopefully God would forgive us.
The Spill Canvas, “The Spill”: The video begins and the lead singer grips tightly medal chains that hook onto the seat of a swing. As the singer lightly drags his feet through the dry dirt that has groove marks from previous swingers scraping their feet, the scene brings back memories of the swing set in my own backyard that filled the many hours of my childhood. The swing set base was made of thick wood, not the cheap steal ones that would only last around three years, and was incredibly sturdy because of all the abuse that it was subjected to through the years. My father and uncle put the swing set together, attaching big 4 x 4’s together with metal hinges, as I would hand them bolts and screws giddily awaiting the finished project. The swing set ended up having a trapeze bar with a pink plastic covering, two swings that had blue seats just like the video, a thick coarse black rope that had four large knots, and a little bridge you could sit on and pretend it was a castle or a home you baked mud pies in. While in place of the swing set now there is a garden, I cannot help but look over the fence into the neighbor’s yard and see the neighborhood kids playing on a swing set of their very own and feel a little twinge of jealousy at the loss of this simple pleasure from my childhood.
Death Cab for Cutie, “Passenger Seat”: A figure dressed in black walks through the screen and lifts a covering off of a dark, polished piano and then proceeds to sit down and lightly press his fingers on the solid white ivory keys as music fills in the background. Four cords are being played over and over in the song, and this takes me back to the simple tunes I played on my family’s piano. When I was younger many of my afternoons were spent practicing the piano until my next lesson, which was on every Thursday evening with my instructor Sheryl. Many hours my sister and I would be spent on our dark mahogany piano, strumming keys with our fingers as Mary had a little Lamb bounced off of our basement walls and filled the room with sound. Most of the time I would be messing with the keys trying to create my own song instead of practicing the ones assigned to me. I would try to do anything to avoid having to practice, usually staring out the window wishing to be outside. During the time I resented my mother for making me take piano lessons, but as I look back on it now and see the empty wall where our old piano used to be I actually miss the routine and simplicity it brought to my childhood.
Emery, “Studying Politics,”: People pumping iron and sweating out one more repetition out of their bodies as the clank of metal strikes against metal. Shots of the band scattered around people working out in an old gym jogs my memory of the hours upon hours I spent in my high school’s weight room during the course of the school year and summer, preparing for the next basketball and soccer season. There is a new weight room now on the upper level of the school, sleek and brand new, but the weight room I knew was in the basement and consisted of dozen of mirrors, weights, and machines. Upon entering the room a distinct smell of musty hot sweat and rubber fills my lungs and feels as if there is almost less oxygen in the room. Trickles of sweat would run down my face as I tried to push one more repetition out of my exhausted muscles as music similar to this Emery song would make the room vibrate. Steel fans would clank and sputter in the corner, almost being completely useless because the air was so stifling in the basement anyways. The hard smell of metal would stay on my hands all day from gripping the coarse stained steel bars that bore the weights, and slowly my hands became just as rough and coarse as the weights themselves. Looking back now, I appreciate all the sweat, blood, and tears that went on in that room because of the discipline it brought to my life in and out of the weight room.
Flyleaf, “All Around Me,”: A band stands in a completely bare white room, as soon as the music begins to play red paint starts to drip down the walls and cover the entire room, soon after yellow paint begin to glide down the walls and become intertwined with the red to create patches of orange. Then there is a flash and the white room appears again, but is gone in an instant and is replaced by baby blue paint dripping down the walls and starts to converge with the other colors on the floor. These colorful arrays of paint brings back all those summers I spent painting houses with my grandpa and sister. The day would begin at 8:00 in the morning and we would work through the hot sun only taking a thirty minute lunch break to rest our sore backs and reapply sunscreen. It was fun to watch the stains and cracks disappear under a new blanket of paint. My least favorite part of the job was priming the house. The primer would burn my nose, as the distinct smell of latex filled them, while I watched the wood from the house soak up the white primer I had just applied to it. While my grandpa is becoming a lot older now and we are starting to paint fewer and fewer houses each summer, I am learning to value my time with my grandpa and sister as our painting escapades come to a close.
Linkin Park, “What I’ve Done”:The bands starts to play and a rush of startling images fill the screen, each one leaving as quickly as it came. One image stuck out in particular, the image of the impoverished woman with jet black hair and downcast eyes holding onto her child and the next image of a man lying on the dirt, who’s every bone in his body is visible and the only clothing covering him is a pair of blue shorts. Instantly in my mind goes back to the summer of my junior year when I traveled to Kingston, Jamaica with a missionary group, Mustard Seed Communities. It was a truly humbling experience being among the poorest of the poor. While all of what I experienced over there will be truly memorable to me, one child in particular sticks out in my mind. She had little tight curls of black hair that piled on top of a smooth round face and a little button nose. Her big brown eyes had a mischievous gleam in them whenever she smiled. She had on a faded pink t-shirt that did not quite cover up her protruding belly button, a side effect from not cutting the umbilical cord properly. She stayed by my side all day before we finally left and she gave me her container of bubbles that I had given her earlier that day. I was so moved I had to advert my gaze so she wouldn’t see me crying. No child has impacted me like she did.
Hellogoodbye, “Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn”: Fun bubbly techno music fills the background as the band dressed in short shorts and tank tops begin to play their upbeat song. This video has a typical beach scenery, brightly colored towels and umbrellas, sunscreen, lifeguards, short shorts, and of course lots of sand and sun. Of course this video takes me back to my most recent summers that were spent at Sara’s Lake. The sand would always burn my bare feet as I trekked my way across it to make my way to the lake. I always loved running my hands through it, the warm grainy feeling it had across my skin, almost like a blanket. As the hot sun beat down on my light skinned body, you could mark how far along summer was by how tan my skin had become. The water’s edges were lined with foam and had a dark murky color; it had once been a gravel pit, from the moss that covered the bottom layer of sand. It would always take me about fifteen minutes to completely submerge myself fully in the water because of the icy temperature of the lake, it always made me gasp. While lakes can be a great way to spend a summer, they can also be very risky. Last year a boy died at Medleman’s Lake, not too far from Sara’s, because he dived in a shallow area and broke his neck. Everyone just needs to remember, a lot worse things can happen than just a sunburn at the beach.
