Tiny keyboard bearing the massive reverie of the past— 
press one button, we’re carried away on a country road, 
marching with saints, leaving the Red River Valley… 
here is every holiday you hated, every hard time, 
each steamy summer wish. 

from “Songbook” by Naomi Shihab Nye

My life has a songbook. There is a collection of songs that immediately transport me to particular times and places. Musics situates and moves with amazing specificity. I can’t remember my passwords for anything, but a lyric from a Boston song from the 1970’s rolls off my tongue. I have to record my hotel room number in notes on my phone, but entire Indigo Girls’ albums are etched in my memory like sacred texts. I often walk into a room and forget why I went there, but I can perform classical Broadway tunes without missing a beat.

My songbook spans genre and culture, story and emotion. Recently, I was sitting on the rooftop at my apartment complex and the Corrine Bailey Rae song, “Put Your Records On” came on. That song — about letting our hair down, chasing our dreams, and finding ourselves — grabbed me the first time I heard it and made tears come to my eyes on my rooftop. I needed to hear it when I felt overwhelmed years ago, and I needed hear it on my rooftop, too. Perfect timing.

Music is always right on time. Our songbooks work like that. I could list one million examples of songs that situate and move me. (I suspect we all could.) Our songbooks are our minds when we need to remember. Our hearts when we need consolation or celebration. Our hands when we need motivation. Our language when we can’t find the words.