The music we listen to becomes the soundtracks of our lives. This is true nowhere more so than in adolescence—when music doesn’t just move from background to foreground, but becomes the language we speak. Because of this, there is nothing quite like the poetry of the teenage romance mix tape—or its modern equivalent, the playlist.
Music is magical, and its enchanted ability to capture the emotions we can’t express as teens, when we’ve yet to develop an adequate language for all we feel, is part of the magic of “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.”
A boy and a girl. A night and a city. An infinite playlist. An infinite date. “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” is a nocturnal indie rock odyssey romance that keeps it real.
Before “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” was a hit movie, it was a hip, heady young adult novel about two teens thrust together for one fun, funny, chaotic, sleepless night in a world of queer-core bands, teen hook-ups, and, loud, live music.
Written in alternating his and her chapters by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, the authors imbue their characters with passion, intelligence, and integrity, and treat their young audience with a rare respect, absent of any condescension. Cohn and Levithan demonstrate an impressively intimate knowledge of both contemporary teens and the Manhattan indie rock scene. Both Nick and Norah are believable, fully fleshed-out members of the YouTube, My Space, Face Book generation. Perhaps the only two straight-edges out on this wild night, neither Nick nor Norah drink or drug. Music, friends, and soon each other, not mood-altering substances, are their obsessions.
The movie is good. The book is far better. But both novel and film have scenes that give them depth and meaning, and elevate them far beyond the typical teen romance into something like art—very much like.
Of the many particularly poignant moments in a night full of insight and revelation, here are my two favorites.
“There’s one part of Judaism I really like,” Norah says. “Conceptually, I mean. It’s called tikkun olam. Basically it says that the world has been broken into pieces. All this chaos, all this discord. And our job—everyone’s job—is to try to put the pieces back together. To make things whole again.”
Nick says, “Maybe we’re the pieces. Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces.”
Or this scene when Nick is talking to his gay friend and band member, Dev.
Dev glides his hand into mine and intertwines our fingers.
“Other bands, it’s about sex. Or pain. Or some fantasy. But The Beatles, they knew what they were doing. You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?”
“What?”
“‘I wanna hold your hand.’ First single. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. They wanna hold your hand. Every successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.”
I wanna hold Nick and Norah’s hand. I wanna listen to their infinite playlist over and over again. It holds not a single superfluous song. They’re the perfect tunes to connect to—to hold hands to, to touch souls to, to fall in love to. And that’s exactly what I did.
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