Music In My Memory
Music plays a very big role in my life. Since very early in my childhood, it has been a running theme in the background, a soundtrack. All sorts of music.
There is a very strong emotional element to music, and with me emotion is tied into memory, and so the music sometimes takes me back to events. It's that way for everybody, and for me it's almost like being there again, whether it was my first church dance where I had many little crushes or long bike rides with my tape player balanced on the handle bars or... bad things.
The bad things being tied to music is very awkward for me. Because of these events, some of my favorite songs have become tainted. There are even entire albums that I simply can't listen to because they entered my life at bad points.
One of my favorite bands is The Alan Parsons Project. For a long time, I had every one of their albums. Except one. That was their late 1983 "The Best Of The Alan Parsons Project". When it came out, I was in the beginning of my first marriage. For me, the album symbolizes what was a very bad idea; that I was ready to be married, that I was completely miserable because I wasn't.
It's just music, and at that songs that came from all of their proceeding albums; only one song, the single "You Don't Believe" was recorded specifically for it. I just can't listen to that song. As a result, I couldn't buy the album for a long time. Even now, I skip that song. Whenever I hear it, I just have memories of a cold apartment, an empty refrigerator and depression.
Our memories are truly amazing thing, but sometimes it takes just the right trigger to bring back a response that makes us remember specific events in ways we might not want to. But it is the burden of being the most complicated of God's creation. The trick is trying to pick the right triggers. If it's music, always try to emphasize the positive. After all, there's nothing more awkward than trying to explain to coworkers why you're sitting there looking depressed for no apparent reason when the CD you're playing hits that certain song.
In music as in neurosurgery, you need to be careful what part of the brain is probed.
There is a very strong emotional element to music, and with me emotion is tied into memory, and so the music sometimes takes me back to events. It's that way for everybody, and for me it's almost like being there again, whether it was my first church dance where I had many little crushes or long bike rides with my tape player balanced on the handle bars or... bad things.
The bad things being tied to music is very awkward for me. Because of these events, some of my favorite songs have become tainted. There are even entire albums that I simply can't listen to because they entered my life at bad points.
One of my favorite bands is The Alan Parsons Project. For a long time, I had every one of their albums. Except one. That was their late 1983 "The Best Of The Alan Parsons Project". When it came out, I was in the beginning of my first marriage. For me, the album symbolizes what was a very bad idea; that I was ready to be married, that I was completely miserable because I wasn't.
It's just music, and at that songs that came from all of their proceeding albums; only one song, the single "You Don't Believe" was recorded specifically for it. I just can't listen to that song. As a result, I couldn't buy the album for a long time. Even now, I skip that song. Whenever I hear it, I just have memories of a cold apartment, an empty refrigerator and depression.
Our memories are truly amazing thing, but sometimes it takes just the right trigger to bring back a response that makes us remember specific events in ways we might not want to. But it is the burden of being the most complicated of God's creation. The trick is trying to pick the right triggers. If it's music, always try to emphasize the positive. After all, there's nothing more awkward than trying to explain to coworkers why you're sitting there looking depressed for no apparent reason when the CD you're playing hits that certain song.
In music as in neurosurgery, you need to be careful what part of the brain is probed.
posted by Robert at 8:09 AM
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