Soundtrack

Preparing to travel westward, Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound" gets stuck in my head.

Theme songs for my life: sometimes I choose them deliberately, but often they emerge unexpectedly from my internal library of pop culture and personal associations. Sometimes it's "Leaving on a Jet Plane"--not the famous version, but a painfully sincere performance by a girl at a Unitarian Youth Convention I followed by best friend to when I was 13. Other times I choose something more flattering, like "Rebel Girl", the Bikini Kill song that every young lady with the slightest punk inclination believes to be about herself.

When I think I'm being funny, I choose Marilyn Monroe's throaty "Diamond's are a Girls Best Friend" (a feminist song about financial independence), or the Waitresses' "I Know What Boys Like" which my roommate has appointed as my identifying ringtone on her phone. "Pretty in Pink" is too obvious, and not fitting beyond the title line.

Mirah gets me when I'm homesick and lonely with lines about the river and the mountains in "Person Person." If I feel like reveling in some wistful sadness I turn to Bright Eyes or the Weakerthans. And Northwest music like Built to Spill tugs nostalgically at my Pacific heart.

Classic old punk charges me up. For a while I woke up each morning with Operation Ivy's "Sound System." My first kiss was at an Anti-Flag show at the RCKNDY, a grungy club that's been replaced by condos. Poly Styrene singing "Oh Bondage, Up Yours" or "I'm a Cliche" by the X-Ray Spex work when I feel ironic, conflicted, or hypocritical.

I used to get "Singin' in the Rain" stuck in my head whenever I was really happy. During my brief stint as a roller derby jammer, I borrowed my moniker from "Hard Hearted Hannah;" I never decided whether Ella Fitzgerald's rendition or the Red Aunts punk cover fit better. The only other palatable song I know of with my name is "Miss Hannah," as sung by Coleman Hawkins. I'd happily follow it's flattering theme (about how everybody admires Miss Hannah).

On long bike rides alone, I sing to myself to keep pedalling--it doesn't matter whether I like the song, only how much of it I can remember to amuse myself. On a bike tour from Portland to San Francisco my accomplice and I played the same Sam Cooke tape over and over from a tiny cassette player tethered to my pannier.

When riding cheerfully through the city on a sunny morning, or drunkenly home on dark night, I imagine I'm moving fast enough that no one can hear my tone deaf self-serenade.