On a hot Phoenix day several years ago, and I was probably about ten or eleven, stuck inside because of the heat, browsing my father’s music library on his laptop. As I double-clicked songs that looked familiar and some that just looked interesting, I started building a list of my favorites to import to my second generation iPod nano named Buttercup. I sampled song after song, working my way through the fairly extensive library of 80’s and 90’s alt rock, solo albums from distinctive-sounding artists, and various other eclectic, seemingly-unrelated works. At last I found myself at the top of a long list of R.E.M. songs. At this time, I was not familiar with R.E.M. I surmised that it was a band my dad liked. Eventually I clicked on the song “Shiny Happy People” and began listening.
Listen to it here:
From the first few notes of this song, I was thrown into some wavering, uncertain recollection. As the song progressed, I became more and more convinced not only that I had heard it before, but that I had loved it. I realized that my dad used to play me this song when I was very young. I could remember glimmers of moments when he, a new parent, and I, a toddler sitting on his shoulders, would listen to this song around the house or in the car. I remembered strongly associating this song with a painting we had in our house from before I was born (Picasso’s “The Dance of Youth”), because to me, both the song and the painting were about happy people dancing and laughing together. 
I don’t know when my father first played this song for me, and asking him about it has failed to yield specificity, but I remember moments involving him and this song from as early as two years old. One of my earliest memories is him singing Shiny Happy People and Little Fall of Rain from Les Mis until I fell asleep. I have no memory of seeing Finding Nemo in the theatre as a four-year-old, and I don’t recall my bedroom until age five or six, but I do remember very early, formative memories of singing with my father. Since then, I have held this song dear both for its bright message and its emotional weight in my life.
I’m not sure why this song captivated me so much as a two-year-old. I assume it’s partially because my dad, whom I adored even then, showed it to me, and we spent time together listening. Perhaps I also picked up some of the meaning of the song, and liked that it had a happy, upbeat sound. Maybe because my dad said he loved it, I thought I should too. Whatever it was back then, it has stayed with me, and whenever I hear Shiny Happy People, I feel a deep nostalgia for my childhood, a burning love for music and my father, and a sense of belonging to something larger than myself.
I often wonder why certain things move me more than other things, more than they move other people, and more or less at different points in my life. One day in my sophomore year of high school, I was listening to Suzanne Vega's "Gypsy," which I had heard at least thirty times before, and it suddenly hit me with a force of beauty and meaning I had never detected before. This arbitrary listening moved me greatly, whereas past listenings had merely been enjoyable. I don’t know why this happens, but I continue to compile a mental list of songs, books, moments, and so on that move me, and hope to remember the experiences I have with them, because each of those experiences shapes me and adds to my story.
