Remember all the football games in high school? I don't. I played video games with my friends

In Leigh Alexander's wonderful article on Kotaku, Life Keeps Reminding Me Of Video Games, she relates to the effects of games influencing how she sees other art forms, and vice versa. She says, "Although the influence of gaming on our lives may be subliminal or subversive, it's impossible to ignore. I've got tons of friends who own game soundtracks and put on the music when it's time to work, exercise, or cry. That spiritual feeling we get when we play something we love is portable. In all kinds of ways, it shapes how we see the world."

Whenever I hear Ani DiFranco's song Fuel I think of Final Fantasy 12, images of Rabanastre flashing through my head, because whenever I was level grinding I would put some music on, and that song was one of my favourites at the time, and always on my playlist. And vice versa. When I play any game at all, the feel of controlling a character onscreen makes me think of the song.

Even further back to the late 90s, any mention or pictures or music from Final Fantasy 8 remind me of high school, driving my car with the windows down, changing the radio station whenever that Smash Mouth song would play, or turning the volume up on Len's "Steal My Sunshine" (wow, i miss that song). All the experiences of that period in my life are intertwined in my memories even though the memories were not directly related to FF8. They were all a part of my life, and each memory reminds me of the other.

Everytime I saw the Guitar Center in Union Square I always flashback to playing hooky my senior year when me and my friends drove an hour to Atlanta to go to the Guitar Center there - the previous night, I had stayed up the entire night playing, and Squall had just saved Rinoa from floating away into space. On the drive to Atlanta in my friend's van, even though we were blasting Jimi Hendrix the entire way, in my head I kept hearing "Eyes on Me."



To this day the image of Squall and Rinoa together surrounded by the black is one that I always associate with the "best years" of life, when we were still children and in school, yet felt free and stupid and could do whatever we wanted, because 1999 is ending, graduation is looming, and we're unsure as hell about what to do next.