Maybe I've got a touch of my brother in me, a bit of that obsessive-compulsiveness, mixed in with my mom's blip-length attention span, but there are certain songs that take me hours to listen to, because something about the song and its lyrics takes my mind so far away, through so many landscapes and emotions that I have to keep restarting to hear the whole song to the end. I call this list "Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By." No, wait. That's a sweet-ass album by Lovage.

Music I Get Lost In:

1. What New York Couples Fight About - Morcheeba
I seem to keep forgetting the lyrics and rediscovering them.

Favorite Line: Once a label is on something, it becomes an It. Like it's no longer alive. It's like a loss of vision, or some dark impression, or a black spot on your eye.

2. Milk - Garbage
Like being on a cliff standing over crashing waves in the middle of the night, not sure if you've already died.

Favorite Line: I am lost. So I am cruel. I'd be love and sweetness if I had you.

3. Safe In Mind - U.N.K.L.E.
An urban haunting.

Favorite Line: I like the night. The street. The smells. The sense...of another world. Sometimes you come face to face with yourself.

4. The Greatest - Cat Power
I believe I spent the majority of a train ride crying because this song is so beautiful. It still moves to me to tears sometimes when I'm traveling alone.

Favorite Line: Once I wanted to be the greatest, two fists of solid rock. With brains that could explain anything feeling...

5. Volcano - Damien Rice
This song is probably #1 Most Played on my iPod.

Favorite Line: What I am to you is not real. What I am to you you do not need. What I am to you is not what you mean to me. You give me miles and miles of mountains and I'll ask for the sea.

6. Lightning Rod - Guster
This was my theme song for the embarkment of my Germany trip. It makes me think of passing snow-covered villages and cathedrals with silver light shining through the clouds.

Favorite Line: Standing on a building, I am a lightning rod. And all these clouds are so familiar. Descending from the mountain tops the gods are threatening. I will return an honest soldier.

7. Babylon - David Gray
The first time I heard White Ladder, I was driving to Vegas in the middle of the night just to turn around and drive back. I had a lot of thinking to do. White Ladder was with me that night, and this song makes my heart sing.

Favorite Line:
Sunday all the lights of London shining, sky is fading red to blue. I'm kicking through the Autumn leaves and wondering where it is you might be going to. Turning back for home you know I'm feeling so alone I can't believe. Climbing on the stair I turn around to see you smiling there in front of me.

8. Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight - Amos Lee
This song puts me at peace.

Favorite Line: Sometimes we forget who we got. Who they are, oh, who they are not. There is so much more in love than black and white. Keep it loose child, gotta keep it tight.

9. Haunted - Poe

Favorite Line: Don't cry, there's always a way. Here in November in this house of leaves we'll pray. Please, I know it's hard to believe. To see a perfect forest through so many splintered trees. You and me, and these shadows keep on changing.

10. Extreme Ways - Moby
Helped me get through my tour of duty living with a hard man in Amsterdam. It helped me stay strong even though every day, my heart was breaking.

Favorite Line: I had to close down everything, I had to close down my mind. Too many things to cover me, too much can make me blind. I've seen so much in so many places, so many heartaches, so many faces, so many dirty things. You couldn't even believe.

11. Ophelia - Ambulance LTD
It's about Hamlet, but the lyrics are just so damn good.

Favorite Line: And babe, I'm just like the best thing, that could happen, happen to someone...