Here’s a rerun for you, since I’m still mad at the internet and all.
Originally published on the original Accidental Jedi, June 12, 2003:
Jay Solo has post up tonight about music and memory, and the way they intertwine. (Usual blogspot cautions apply, a situation which Jay is laboring to fix.)
The thing that I find incredible is that no matter how hard we try to overwrite this type of memory, it doesn’t seem to ever work completely. Layers just keep getting added, at least for me, and by this point some of the songs that have been with me for many years trigger a string of associations from different parts of my life. Since we’re in a country mood tonight, I’ll use Reba as an example..."Fallin’ Out of Love” gives me first driving around with my best friend, right out of high school, listening to the song when it was new and loving the tough-girl lament. Then stocking shelves in a Target store a few years later, wrestling with a breakup, trying to remember all the words. A parking lot in Pensacola, another friend in the passsenger seat of my truck, listening to another Reba CD and trying to remember which album the song is on. Driving across West Texas in January, after another breakup, and hitting repeat until my eyes were dry when I sang along. Cleaning a friend’s apartment in Virginia, trying to overwrite the West Texas episode. Driving to San Francisco for the first time in years to see a friend I thought I’d lost forever, who re-entered my life like a gift.
Does this happen to you? Can you ever really forget things that are linked in your mind with music?
I can’t. I often wish I could.
(For those who enjoy TMI, this can have disastrous consequences. There is a song that is associated with a perfect moment in my life, one that was full of love and promise and that sense of being light as air and graceful as a cat that flows through you when all is absolutely right with the world. Every so often it comes on the radio when I am at work, and sends me running for the ladies’ room for a time out to get a grip on myself. It’s embarrassing to have a moment so closely associated with a piece of music that you can’t hear it without totally losing your composure, but I suspect everybody’s got one of those, too. I just hope nobody covers yours anytime soon.)
Interestingly enough, I got what I think was my very first link from Jay on that post. *grin*
In any case, nearly two years have passed, and I find that Reba now evokes my kitchen in the summertime, me hugely pregnant, washing dishes and smiling to myself thinking of all of the things I mentioned in this post. And that other song? It makes me smile the wistful smile of perfect memory, with an echo of remembered pain making today’s happiness somehow sweeter.
I love the way that music resonates through our lives. It’s truly a gift.
So true...I just had one of these moments about 10 minutes ago.
Great post, Deb!
Posted by Amanda on 05/04 at 01:24 PMExcellent post! I have several of those songs, mostly tied to poignant highschool and college memories. Forever Young by Alphaville, Time Warp (from Rocky Horror), even Canon in D.....they all have bittersweet feelings tied to them.
Posted by Redhead Mommy on 05/05 at 11:06 AM
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