Soundtrack to a Marriage

Today is our tenth wedding anniversary. Ten years! A few things have happened since then: moved from Arizona to New York to start our life together. Found great jobs and great friends while we were there. Jill schooled me on classic films. We lived in a giant empty loft in an industrial building in Williamsburg with little more than a mattress and two incredibly uncomfortable kitchen chairs. We moved to another part of Brooklyn and had a super named Ralph who'd say things like "Yous Guys." I tried to write a novel. We went to Paris in 2004--Jill's first time to Europe. We lived in Nolita in an apartment with a fantastic closet but a bed three feet from the ceiling. We moved to Los Angeles in 2005 and put some roots down, moved our careers forward. We embraced the beauty of LA--hikes through the hills, beaches in the fall. We got lost in a bamboo forest on Maui. We started doing weird things like exercising. I became a tennis fan. We went to Greece for two weeks and it was the most beautiful trip I've ever been on. We had Cooper. Jill became a runner--she went from not being able to run for more than a couple minutes to running a half marathon in a little over two hours, eight months later. Among other things.

I could make a hundred different mixes to describe our last ten years together, but I've settled on this one because it feels like time traveling. For every year that we've been married, I've chosen a song or an artist that we, as a unit, played the hell out of in that year. Some of these songs we still play the hell out of, others we haven't listened to in forever. Some years had a lot of contenders, others didn't.

2001 | Bjork: Hidden Place

2002 | The Decemberists: Shiny
2003 | The Radio Dept.: Where Damage Isn't Already Done
2004 | Feist: Mushaboom
2005 | The Ruby Lee: Skies as Blue
2006 | Midlake: Head Home
2007 | Andrew Bird: Heretics
2008 | Little Joy: The Next Time Around
2009 | Animal Collective: Bluish
2010 | The Radio Dept.: This Time Around

I don't think there is a qualifying song for 2011, or not yet. So let's conclude the mix by taking it back to this day, ten years ago, to our first dance.