Luchini

There's a popular theory going around about love languages. You can feel loved by physical touch, gifts, words of affirmation, acts of devotion or quality time, or, as for most people, a combination of all five. But me? Of course, I have a weirdly specific and cumbersome love language all my own.

In any picture of me as a kid, you'll see me either looking disdainfully down the camera into your soul, or with headphones on, earbuds in, and a smile in my eyes. It's not so much about drowning out the world around me, but more about cultivating taste and living my life with my own soundtrack shadowing my steps. I would carry around two books of CDs (what are those? o.O) and batteries for my Walkman. I would search for days and days, only knowing a few choice lyrics or chord progressions in thrift and CD stores with my parents, asking the cashier with no shame to play me a few tracks from an album that I thought had what I was looking for, and then beg my parents to buy it regardless. I was a collector of sound.

I'm not sure how or why music grabbed me the way it did. With my parents, there was a good chance I would love reading, writing, cooking, video games, or cars with equal ferocious intensity as I do music, but as it stands, music was my first love. My first memory ever, is of Toddler Tess sitting in front of a subwoofer swaying and clapping her hands while the grown ups played grown up games in the background.

As I grew, so did the technology and the hunger for more. I went from a Walkman to an iPod, from the knowledge of the cashier, to the knowledge of the world wide web. And even still, my sound collecting grows. My appreciation for all types of music has grown. My understanding of layering and complexity within these things I love has grown.

It stands to reason then, that music is my love language.

I fell in love with Tarzan over a thousand miles away; his personality and character were major pluses, but if I'm honest, his music knowledge was the first thing that made my heart flutter. It's enticing, exciting, after walking around for decades speaking a language and finally finding someone who speaks the same. Plus, he makes music, creating new things that never existed before he put them together. If that's not a panty dropper I don't know what is....Just to reinterate, because I feel like  I'm going in weird ex-girlfriend territory here, he and I ain't together anymore - this is just a crazy tangent...uh...

I digress.

Camp Lo's "Luchini" is my zenith. From the first time I heard it as a kid, I felt this incredible feeling like I could do anything, I could be anything. It's not about the lyrics (which took me years to even sort of understand) but the feel. "Luchini" is the feeling of falling in love and speeding down a highway towards a sunset with wind in your hair. "Luchini" is the feeling of finding a perfect pair of jeans for that perfect shirt you found a few weeks ago. "Luchini" is a raise at work, or better yet, getting to leave early. It's golden and pristine, it's giddy and chill. It is what it is.

I haven't been feeling real Luchini lately. That's not to say I've been super depressed or anxious, but I just feel like I'm existing and not really living. I've been feeling like who I am isn't enough for my damn self and that something was inherently wrong with my overall hopeful outlook on the world. I've been feeling like my history, as noted in the previous blog, made me some sort of damaged goods. And then I went on iTunes and found Teedra Moses put out a new album (listen to it) with a song that samples what?

You guessed it.

Hearing "Luchini" with a new twist makes me happy. It reminds me that, just as music can grow and become new, so can I. Just as my music knowledge expands, so does my musical love language and understanding of myself. What it takes to make me happy now, is the same thing it took to make me happy then, and instead of being so hard on myself for that perceived inability to mature, I can instead be happy with my simplicity. I'm still the girl with the headphones. I'm still the girl with the open heart. As hard as it is to remain, I am still me.

Proof, I suppose, that some things, no matter how much time passes, remain cool. :)

-Tess