Lost In The Music

From Tegan and Sara to The Summer Set - music has always brought me back to me. I heard a clip of music today that made my heart skip a beat & I ached to write about.

This post might not be filled with so much “content” - no revelations or realizations or deep truths or trauma processing, just a message that sometimes music changes it, when we let it. Sometimes music changes us, if we let it. And today, I’m letting it. Because today, I need anything willing to try to change me, just for a little while. Just until this fierce grasp of pain gripping my heart fades a little bit.

where do you go, with your broken heart in tow? 
what do you do with the left over you? 
and how do you know, when to let go? 
where does the good go? where does the good go? 

-Tegan & Sara

Sure, there were tapes in which I recorded songs off my boom box radio to listen to on repeat, and there was my first collection of high school CD’s played incessantly in the amazing amounts of time I use to spend driving around the in the car. Then, there was the birth of musicals for me - starting with when RENT was released as a movie, followed by Les Miserables, and eventually, the first live performance back 21 years ago of Wicked, coupled by the soundtrack released for fans all those years ago, and just a few months back, the gift of the world movie premier - a whole topic for another day.

But the first actual band, not cast or ensemble or solo artist, the first band I remember really truly fangirling out about was Tegan and Sara. They began touring in 1998, but I wasn’t lucky enough to see them live until 21 years later, in 2009, my first year out of college. They payed the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and the room was dark and thick with smoke and pyrotonics and even though there was a folding chair behind me I stood almost the whole time because I was just so excited to be there. That was 16 years ago, and at 23, I was still in so many ways just a child. I remember what I wore that night, I remember the cab my roommate and I took from our apartment, I remember getting home, feeling high from the adrenaline and audience and the encore performances.

I wanted more.

It turns out that Tegan and Sara were my The Summer Set, before I’d been introduced to The Summer Set. Now, here’s a band that will very likely forever hold my whole heart.

I was introduced to TSS on a spring night back in 2016 while at #TWLOHA10 in Orlando, FL - a trip that I’ve built so much of my life around, to be honest. This month marks a decade of time since I first heard these words:

Then you lost your shoes as it started to rain
And your jeans soaked through
But you smiled anyway
Throw our hearts in the air
Hearts in the air, hearts in the air

[Chorus]
We're catching lightning in a bottle
Don't give a fuck about tomorrow
Yeah, we're dancing in the backseat
We don't need gravity here in the afterglow
Yeah, we're rolling with the thunder
Now take a breath, we're going under
We're getting busy on the backstreets
We don't need gravity here in the afterglow

-The Summer Set

The italicized words - hearts in the air, they became the anthem of my life. They became the hashtag for our wedding. They simply became part of us, R and I.

In that season, we had a year of them - we saw The Summer Set Perform live three times between April and October in three different sates on their Stories for Monday Tour in Orlando (House of Blues), Chicago (Bottom Lounge) and Peoria (in a haze of grief, just two weeks out from Jordan’s tragic passing) and each time - I felt alive in the presence of the band, alive by the music in the room. I’d never felt that before. I never felt that power. That hope. That connection. I desperately needed it. The feeling that staying was worth it. That hope was real. That help was real. That everything TWLOHA stood for meant something and then some.

Then TSS announced a hiatus, and we thought that was all we’d ever have. Grainy photos and old-school iPhone videos, photos of our bracelets in the sand after the rain on the night we saw them in Chicago, polaroids of the band huddling together, a wristband, some vintage teeshirts and a heart full of memories.

Except, they came back in the season I needed them the most. They announced their return in August of 2021, just a few weeks after the twins died. Not only had they reunited as a band, but they were also releasing two new singles, and that they were working on a whole new album.

One of those singles - “Back Together” is one that felt like it was released along with a spool of thread and a needle to specifically sew my broken heart back together, fragment by fragment.

It’s been 3.5 years since this song came out, since this chapter of life, and half the time I listen to it it still makes me cry.

The good kind of tears.

That's when I learned to appreciate the Arizona stars 
And that tomorrow isn't promised if the planet falls apart 
So we should be there for each other 
Not too stubborn to pick up the phone

Any minute now the doors will open 
They'll come rushing in 
And the diehards on the barricade won't care how long it's been 
They'll just be happy to be here 
To be honest with you so am I

But if the world is gonna end some day 
I'll send a message that says 
"Just in case we don't live forever 
Let's get the band back together"

-The Summer Set

Between August, 2022 and September 2023, we were so lucky to be able to see TSS live - again at the Bottom Lounge in Chicago, a very bittersweet show at The Social in Orlando, the night before we laid sweet Manda to rest, two weeks later at the Chicago House of Blues, and finally in the fall along with the band Boys Like Girls at the Argon Ballroom.

I’m not a religious or a spiritual person, but each of these performances felt more and more sacred - like singing my heart out, finding laughter and tears, and being in the presence of so many other diehard fans. I have hundreds of photos and videos from live performances- holding onto moments like memories and magic.

Today, I got lost for a little while thinking about the books and the art and the music that bind us, the things that we fall in love with alone and separate and together, because they open our hearts and our minds and they make us feel something other than stuck in the mundane, stuck in the daily, stuck in the yuck.

And I’ll tell you, there are TV shows I watch on repeat, movies too (I wrote about some of that here, on a whim much like this one), but theres nothing that sits beside you in the dark in the middle of the night like a song.

Coincidentally as I was writing this, TSS launched a promo today for new music - a single or an album or a tour - does it even matter which anymore? But I know that if you text MMATRS to 480-460-8890 you get an audio clip I cant stop listening to but I also am unable to post here.

So if you’re looking for something to hold onto, something to love, to something to feel seen, text the number. Get the clip. See if it resonates with you too. And hold onto these words when the tears are falling and the grief is heavy and the truth of everything you seem to know feels both unfathomable and unrealistic and yet honest all at the same time…

Music is the thing that saves you.

the world is heavy

life is uncertain

but music, music is forever

so put down your phone,

turn up the volume,

and meet me at the record store.

-Brian Logan Dales, The Summer Set

& so I’ll leave you with this -