Music as Memory

[Adena]

Suzanne Vega - Rosemary: It's just after dark. I'm standing with Ayinsa, our arms locked, with her hugging me close to her and me crying, after she found me outside having been beaten up when I went out walking. This song was playing loudly in the house as we walked up to it.

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love: It's midnight, New Year 2008. Tears are pouring down the faces of our family as all of our friends arrive. We're all really happy, leaping up and down, crying and hugging each other because we haven't seen each other for so long.

Right Said Fred - Those Simple Things: I'm lying in my bedroom, awake late. I've just written about 10 pages. I feel really happy within myself. (The last time I was going to be that happy for about 3 months)

Miriam Makeba - Amampondo: I'm dancing on a stage, to this music, in front of some of my friends. (I was leaving - they made me dance to it) My African friends were singing their lungs out while everyone else was clapping me.

Avril Lavigne - Losing Grip: I'm in a car with my family, but I'm detached from them. I'm thinking about everything I have to hide from them. I'm resolving to go to the funeral of one of my friends so I can apologize to her.

I, like you, could go on for hours, but these are a few of my most prominent musical memories. Thank you Hope for strating this thread - it's great subject matter.

[Adena]

Jul 20, 2008 7:13:50 GMT @hope said:

Hi Adena. It is so nice to meet you. Your memories are so powerful. I tried to listen to each of the songs and picture a little of what you were feeling. You seem like an incredibly strong person. I am glad you like the thread -- I don't think that I will ever hear "Hounds of Love" again without picturing you and your family on New Year's eve. -- It is strange but for each memory you wrote, I now have a visual image though we have never meet. Like I am 'unstuck' in your time. Thanks so much for sharing.

I don't think I'll be able to hear Solitude again without picturing you at the round table trying to write. Being able to share one another's memories is indeed a special thing. But credit still goes to you for the orignal idea - thank you.

[Adena]

Jul 20, 2008 8:33:56 GMT @hope said:

Thanks, Adena -- I have a question. For the bad memories, do you avoid the songs now? There is one Pink Floyd song that I once loved but it is associated with an awful point in my life. I haven't listened to it for 30 years. Sometimes I wonder if I just listen to it again, I could somehow let go of some of that old pain. What do you think?

Some I avoid. None of the ones here, but the main one would be 'The Analyst' by Delta Goodrem. I had an awful thing happen while it was playing, I listened to it the next day and I 'unstuck', and never since.

I wonder if you could let go of the pain listening to such a song, or whether it would re-open the wounds? Even thinking about that song makes me want to be sick. It was a pretty terrible memory though.

[tannis]

Jul 20, 2008 7:13:50 GMT @hope said:

It is strange but for each memory you wrote, I now have a visual image though we have never meet. Like I am 'unstuck' in your time. Thanks so much for sharing.

That's exactly how I felt, too!
Yes, thank you both for sharing your memories and your poetry...

[Barry SR Gowing]

I don't know about specific moments, but some songs always evoke specific images and/or feelings. "Hounds of Love", for example.

--Paul--

[rosabelbelieve]

Great idea for a thread. Music can be a very, very evocative trigger of memories for me, and closely intertwined with the emotional ground that supports them. It sort of carries with it the whole sense-feeling impression that memory recalls. And I really enjoyed reading the songs and instances that make people here come 'unstuck.'

Here are some of mine... maybe more associations than memories, but here they are anyway.

Kate Bush - All The Love -

Driving on a misty, rainy day past a train station and seeing the rails all damp sort of smoky looking and feeling very quiet..

Bjork - Hyperballad (Strings Version) -

Watching these flocks of pigeons come loose from the tops of buildings and swoop like skeins of yarn over the river below, always diving and then rising up again, like loops of calligraphy in the air, and feeling as if the abandon of spring had stepped in and awakened a change within me. And feeling as if I were falling in love.

Joanna Newsom - Emily -

Gazing up at a starry sky on a balmy, firefly-filled night, and feeling blissfully happy about a poem someone had written. And also looking over meadows cloaked in this wonderful green, and really being conscious of a certain tenderness and gentleness in that color.

Kate Bush - Top Of The City

Being in my room and sobbing so hard I nearly felt my body was floating, just before everything got much better...

[Al Truest]

Yes This is a great thread.

"The smell of burning fields, will now mean you and here" - 'Never Be Mine" This is so accessible and evocative as an example. But ones that bring back associative memories are:

Suzanne Vega - reminds me of several events and I can't even recall the album.

"And So is Love" The title says why...

Billie Holiday - Hope - I have fond memories of a friend that loved her music. I do too now,

Some guilty pleasures that bring back memories:

Culture Club - "Do you really want to Hurt me"
Fine Young Cannibals - "She Drives me Crazy"
Joe Jackson - "Steppin Out"
Al Stewart - "Year of the Cat"


I have a ton more that i must look up.

[Adena]

I'll post some more of these if you don't mind.

Angel (sung by the Choir of Hard Knocks, composed by Sarah McLachlan): Being alone, waiting for my mother to come back. She was about to miscarry a child which led to my father leaving us. It was way before I even discovered this song, but it always unsticks me.

Right Said Fred - Those Simple Things: I'm alone in the house, sitting down and writing poetry at my computer. This song came on. I felt pure, overjoyed, loved and content.

Savage Garden - Gunning Down Romance - Alone in my room, drawing, with blood pouring from my hand. It was splashing on the edge of my book but I didn't care because I was so absorbed.

Sheila Chandra - Village Girl: I'm sitting out in the stars, slightly drunk... (alright, okay, I shouldn't have been drinking) I was thinking how lucky I was to be alive.

Soweto Gospel Choir - World in Union: I'm trying to salvage something from my life. Ayinsa and I play this song over and over again, and it calms me some.

It's funny, after listening to Those Simple Things again, I realized that the two memories associated with it were from the same day, about 2 hours apart.

[rosabelbelieve]

Jul 21, 2008 13:44:18 GMT @hope said:

Thanks for being so honest. Maybe I will wait another 30 years before listening to that Pink Floyd song.

It's an interesting situation... I have a few songs that I listen to a lot in sorrowful times (for instance the whole of The Red Shoes, which is always Kate's best album for me when I'm feeling down. ), but because they are such a positive influence then, there are no bad associations. Maybe if hearing the song had been a coincidence, though, instead of something I purposefully did, I'd feel differently.

[Adena]

I listened to some of the songs that caused pain for me yesterday, with interesting results. Two of the songs I listened to caused me real distress, pain and then some. One I was engulfed in the old memory but it wasn't so painful anymore. The other two I really felt at peace with the little Adena back in my memories, in those bad times, knowing it was going to get better for her and she would come out as a stronger person from those bad times. It was a wonderful feeling.

[rosabelbelieve]

Those are interesting results. Music can be a very healing influence, able to reach into our pain and hurt and bring some sort of beauty out of it. And growth always includes pain. But I think forgiveness and acceptance are a much deeper peace and contentment that simply being without woundedness.

This is a little bit off topic, but one strong observation I've had is that whenever I am feeling really hurt or sorrowful, music, and especially Kate's, becomes ten times more important to me. It's really strange how sadness can make you more sensitive to the healing power and intensity of emotion in something. Does anyone else have this experience?

[Al Truest]

Jul 23, 2008 0:05:30 GMT rosabelbelieve said:

Those are interesting results. Music can be a very healing influence, able to reach into our pain and hurt and bring some sort of beauty out of it. And growth always includes pain. But I think forgiveness and acceptance are a much deeper peace and contentment that simply being without woundedness.

This is a little bit off topic, but one strong observation I've had is that whenever I am feeling really hurt or sorrowful, music, and especially Kate's, becomes ten times more important to me. It's really strange how sadness can make you more sensitive to the healing power and intensity of emotion in something. Does anyone else have this experience?

Music has a dampening affect on raw emotion, I find. It helps to intensify the feelings and help purge them from our consciousness until reason can kick in...

[rosabelbelieve]

It has a harmonizing and cathartic effect, for me.

[Adena]

For me, music, whether I'm playing it or listening, is my life. It's how I survive. I can shove as much emotion as I want into it and it won't fight back.

I guess that's why I associate music with memory so strongly - a little trigger word from a song can have me sobbing on the floor.

And on that note, I have a new memory/music moment to share:

Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill: I'm sitting in my room, thinking about how far I've come, and I know it's all going to be okay. (thirteen-year old Adena, heading up her fourteenth birthday)

[Adena]

Jul 24, 2008 14:42:14 GMT @hope said:

Jul 23, 2008 11:55:27 GMT Adena said:

And on that note, I have a new memory/music moment to share:

Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill: I'm sitting in my room, thinking about how far I've come, and I know it's all going to be okay. (thirteen-year old Adena, heading up her fourteenth birthday)

I have a very similar memory-- Sitting on my bed when I was 13 and feeling as though I would be just fine. The song was Bunny Wailer - Dreamland. I had forgotten.

It probably won't last me long, but it's a nice memory to have for bad times.