I was going to write earlier today but got sidetracked by an emergency: a Ryan Reynolds movie came on TV. Specifically, the movie Definitely, Maybe, which falls into my Films I Have to Stop and Watch category because it was shot in New York and I saw it while living there. So…priorities.

The opening credits are set to Reynolds’ character, Will, walking through the city while “Everyday People” provides his soundtrack. It reminded me of my constant city companion, my iPod, and the hundreds of songs it contained that were the backdrop to my five years of island walking. Heartbreak songs and pump-up songs, mellow songs and feel-good songs flowed through my earbuds and served multiple functions: preventing me from looking like a tourist (and prompting people to ask me for directions, which I loved), and amplifying the already-amplified experience of life in Manhattan. I created my own world with music, and I happily lived there from the moment I skipped off my front stoop until I reached my destination.

I think about that same music as it flows now from my iPod to my car stereo, the creation of new landmarks against the backdrop of old soundtrack (supplemented by The Husband’s tunes, a major benefit of marriage), and about all the other material that sings through my life and gives everyday moments their emotional resonance. About the words not set to music: the Bible verses I’ve known since a child that have transformed from comfort to rock; the encouragements from others on cards and in letters and emails that remain filed and kept; the leather-bound book full of quotes I’ve transcribed over the years–C.S. Lewis, Lord Byron, Flannery O’Connor, The Lord of the Rings, The Velveteen Rabbit…Bill Cosby.

I wonder how many songs, how many words, I haven’t heard over the years, and I want to listen better and add more to my soundtrack. But most of all, I think about how rich a life must be to always have the gift of words to return to, and set it to music.