Songs That Make Up the Soundtrack of Your Life

Whenever I hear certain songs or pieces of music, I am whisked into a time tunnel, to that moment when the song became seared into my soul.

Where Evil Grows - The Poppy Family

Unfortunately, this song had dark connotations for me, because it played on the car radio on a trip home from the doctor's when I had just received two painful shots in each knee joint to combat mononucleosis. I was 5 at the time and was in bed for a month with it. When I hear this song I can still see the red uphosltery in our white VW bug.



Maggie May - Rod Stewart

On the opposite side of the spectrum, this song played on the radio as my family moved from Michigan in the US to Nova Scotia, Canada when I was six. When I hear this song, I'm in the cab of the truck as my dad drove, while my mom, baby sister, grandmother and uncle were in the car following behind in our little caravan.

My first intense impressions of the golden seaweed along the rocks by Peggy's Cove always accompany this song for me.



Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

Fast forward to high school, when the house parties we'd have often led to dancing, and eventually this song would encourage us to take that chance and ask the guy or gal on whom we had a crush to slow dance. Oh, the mindblowing feeling of being closerthanthis to a certain someone.



E=mc² - Big Audio Dynamite

When I was 21, I moved from Nova Scotia to Toronto, Ontario, where I blossomed in the glow of Big City life. This song instantly takes me to that time of self-discovery, where I can hear the streetcars, feel the heat of a Toronto summer, experience the recognition in the eyes of the man who is now my husband that we had found each other in all the wide world.



Rusholme Ruffians - The Smiths

This song takes me to that time, still in Toronto, when I was a student at Ryerson Polytechnic University, working towards my film degree by day and as an usher at the O'Keefe Centre by night. This song brings the chill of a fall night, the sound of dry leaves skittering and the grateful warmth of hopping on the subway.



Sucks to Be You - Prozzak

This song takes me to the two years my husband and I spent in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where we moved so my grandmother could have someone living in the house with her. Although it was a return to my home province for me, and a reunion with the Atlantic Ocean, which I'd missed every day that I'd lived in Toronto, going from a city of millions to a fishing town of 8000 was a bit of shell shock for us. MuchMoreMusic kept us from going completely out of our gourds.



Start Wearing Purple - Gogol Bordello

My current soundtrack is definitely dominated by the music of Gypsy Punk band Gogol Bordello. I'm currently back in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. This music will always make me think of this time in my life, forever more.

So what are the songs that make up the soundtrack of your life?

Nothing Attracts Women Quite Like the Unattainable Man

"I stalked him like a strange fan," said Madonna of getting Ukrainian musician Eugene Hutz to play the philosophical narrator and one of three main characters in her film Filth and Wisdom. - Billboard.com



"I had become obsessed with Eugene," writes documentary filmmaker Pavla Fleischer. "That's what it was. One drunken car ride with him in the summer of 2004 and I could not get him out of my mind.

He was loud and obnoxious but with a passion I rarely saw in men I have known. He serenaded me with Gypsy songs, and enchanted me with his spirit. I needed more time with him but sadly, Eugene did not need me.


He was after all the lead singer of New York's notorious Gypsy Punk band, Gogol Bordello, with no shortage of female fans. Like a woman possessed I played my final card, and appealed to the only thing I could: his ego.

'I'll make a film about you,' I proposed and to my delight, he agreed." - Pavla Fleischer


A few weeks ago I didn't even know who Eugene Hutz was. But I'm reading Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer for a reading challenge, and even though I hadn't finished the book I asked my husband to bring home the DVD from Blockbuster, where he works. Playing the Ukrainian translater for New York-Jewish Jonathan was Eugene Hutz, turning in a remarkable performance for a non-actor. Now, like these other women, I'm quite obsessed with him.

I find it comforting to know that two creative women resorted to making films in order to spend time with this man. What is it about Eugene that inspires such wild attraction?



I'm certain it has to do with his passion.


It oozes from his pores.













Like most people whose lust for life is infectious, Eugene's energy spills over to whomever he's with. Including complete strangers like myself who have never even met him before.

I started thinking about Eugene's charismatic hold over women.

I believe it's his Unattainable Man persona.

Who could be more unattainable than a part-Gypsy globetrotter whose undying passion is Music?

Here's a little taste of what drew me to Eugene - a scene from Everything is Illuminated:



And here is the authentic Eugene, speaking for Unattainable Men everywhere with Wanderlust King.



This is the documentary Pavla Fleischer made so she could hang out with Eugene:



And here's a performance documentary made by yet another woman, Margarita Jimeno, showcasing the carnival atmosphere of Eugene's band:



And this is part of an interview promoting Madonna's film Filth and Wisdom.