Aide-Mémoire

What's always fascinated me about art is how, once reexposed to it at a subsequent date, it forcibly links us to the virginal time and place when we first stumbled upon it, clumsily or not. I use the all-inclusive "we" perhaps mistakenly, though certainly hopeful, in thinking that art plays or has played as important a role in others' lives as it has in mine. Art being the general term, but I'm addressing music in particular. The same time-travelling force is there in all art forms. Novels, for instance, or short stories, that collided with me in a powerful way and made some kind of indelible mark can perform that same magical trick of reeling me back to our original introduction, the first instance of being taken over emotionally by a peice of work. The major difference here is I'm more prone to return again and again on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to music. Whereas with a novel, while I do love to reread some of my favorites, because my reading queue is already a monstrous line to begin with and because that line continues to grow dementedly longer I simply can't spend all my time rereading those near and dear ones, much as I'd love to. Such is why we record quotes. If I can't have access to the entire thing, the least I can do is return to those sacred moments.

Music, on the other hand, is a different monster altogether. At an average length of three or four minutes per song I can handpick this one or that one and relive that experience on a whim. By simply shuffling through a playlist, all of a sudden a selection will come on and I'm stirred by it. And if it's a whole record then it's as if I'm experiencing a movie, a long theatrical performance of the past, each song one part of the whole. The music links not just with the particular time and place I first heard it, but what was going on around me, the complex emotional subtext, how I was feeling, all of these deep aspects of self and life, friends and love, coming together and coiling itself to a song, or a series of songs, or a whole record.

At once frightening and inspiring to know that art could hold such dominion over my memories, I'm thankful for this. There're too many remembrances to keep in our heads all at once, so we rely on moments like this to guide us. Because the past is dark, foggy, and clouded with so much debris, it's wonderful to have a foglight such as art to break through that confusion. I can hear a song I was familiar with in the third grade and remember with the sharpest of precision everything going on around me, right down to what we were doing in school at that particular time, an anxiety, an argument going on. Or another record from a later date when I was in my vinyl phase, listening the needle scratch and lift while I read from the lyrics sheet word for word, following along. Or a record that somehow encompasses an entire summer, which is basically a whole catalogue of memories. And even recently, I hear a song come on that I was listening to when I first moved out West, and I'm thrown right back into that. Whirlwinds of feeling I had then swoop upon me, lift me up, and return me to that place. I don't just remember these times, I'm practically immersed once again in them, as if it were the first time. The weather, the mist, a certain smell in the hallway.

Sometimes it's one particular moment, a flash in the pan memory that for whatever reason made a lasting image. But most often it's not so singular. Rather, what's encompassed is a whole span of time, a week a month, or maybe more, and all types of sensations, sights, sounds, touches; in short, everything one person can grab hold of. I doubt there's any exact science to it, nor should there be, but rather it seems dependent on number of factors, namely the music itself and how that accompanies the things happening all whirligig around me at that moment. Art seems to reach into the chaos of those memories and federate them around one common element. It's truly a breathtaking and fascinating phenomena the way art solidifies itself into something no longer merely seen or read or heard, but as a vital part of us. 

Even right now, I'm perusing the photographs and the writing I've done over the year - this one year alone - and I'm deluged with memories. It's like the journalist's concept of 5 Ws, who, what, when, where, and why all come running, functioning as a through-the-looking-glass kind of portal. For example, I began to rotate quite frequently through this song below and the rest of The National's record when I first moved West. Not a new song by any means, but now when I listen to it I'm aware of how fiercely it caught ahold of me. Somehow a mark so influential was made that I can no longer hear even the first few notes without getting a pinch of sentimentality. As I prepare to leave San Diego soon and venture up North, I can't help but wonder, because how all of this plays out is never quite known until some time has passed, which songs, which artists, which books, which art will help define and aid in memory these most recent months.