Good morning! I hope the world is being good to you and you’re being good to it.

Grab your coffee or beverage of choice and share a thought with me!

I enjoy listening to music whilst reading, like creating a soundtrack for the images playing in my head. The music doesn’t distract much, if at all, from the words, especially if I find the perfect musical accompaniment. Often, I find myself playing a movie score, so there’s only music and lyrics don’t need to compete with the writing. In Time, for example, has the perfect soundtrack for action-packed and ethereal moments. One album, however, creates a reflexive memory unlike any other.

Stone Temple Pilot’s debut album Core is forever intertwined with pre-Disney Star Wars novels. It started with The Truce at Bakura, which picks up as Darth Vader’s funeral pyre burns to embers. I remember riding in the passenger seat of the family minivan en route to an out-of-town baseball game. While late to discovering my musical tastes, particularly that coming out of Seattle and the grunge genre, I eventually found Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and STP, and I was hooked. It must have been divine intervention that saw me putting the Core CD in my portable player and cracking open that particular book. The music’s grittiness perfectly complemented the uncertainty and darkness surrounding the Rebellion’s heroes as they navigated the immediate aftermath of Palpatine’s death. These two artworks melded into a single package. I could no longer listen to the album without thinking about the events of Bakura, and I didn’t dare read Bakura without listening to Core.

After The Truce at Bakura, I realized Core felt more Star Wars than a single novel. The album stayed with me into the X-Wing series. Wedge Antilles dazzled with the rest of Rogue Squadron as they dispatched Tie Fighters against a backdrop of Crackerman and Sex Type Thing. John Williams is a master of creating cinematic themes, but STP gave me the driving, pulsing score to the movie crafted in my head.

Eventually, the Deftones’ White Pony album assumed book scoring responsibility as I transitioned to Ender’s Game and its sequels during the long bus ride across country for the big school band trip. The haunting melody of Passenger somehow conveyed the loneliness and importance of Andrew Wiggins’ plight.

Both Core and White Pony are forever tied to specific universes. These auditory and written cocktails created core memories that I obviously still think about today, and I’m still always looking for the next perfect pairing.