odd connections

A song begins and we realise that we remember the lyrics. It has been years since the last time we had heard it (how many? 10. 15, 20... it doesn't matter), but it had been filed somewhere in our memory. In a hidden corner, yes: a dark, moist, messy corner that we don't dare to go to. But an existing corner, nonetheless. Maybe in the same corner where we filed the connections one day we created between that song and our life then. A connection that we probably don't know that exists, that we don't think of us capable of doing it but, that, actually, some day we did.

Maybe it is a song that we heard on a train station, right about to begin a journey and we felt that it talked to us; that the melody expressed the emotion of that trip about to start, that the lyrics referred to it, that the protagonist of the song wasn't an anonymous character, but ourselves (lowering my head ashamed, I admit that my travelling song, the one that always puts me on a good mood, the one that tells me that I am in fact about to start a journey, is Dreams, by The Cranberries. And it is this one because it reminds me of the teenage TV series My so-called life, because it drives me back to that period full of changes, novelties, illusions).

Some other occasions, the connection may not be as direct. Maybe it is a song that we listened to several times in a row on the car whilst doing the same trip (maybe only out of laziness to change the CD, maybe because it was the only one that the old cd-player was able to read). Unconsciously, that music becomes linked to that route, to that time, to that "us" from the past. And whenever we hear that song again, no matter where we might be, no matter what we might be doing, chances are that it will awake in us the memories of those car trips. The mellancoly, the sadness and frustration for the past times are optional.

I am aware of quite a good amount of this kind of connections. One of them involves The dresden Dolls and the road trip of one hour and a half from Galashiels to Stirling that I used to do three times a week for almost two years. Another one is Burial on the way to Sant Hilari, early in the morning: darkness, coldness, work... it is an obvious connection.

One way or another, music becomes part of us, it arises our senses, it brings us memories and feelings, it reminds us that the songs we are listening to today will haunt us back tomorrow. Therefore, I see myself forced to give a piece of advice, me, who hates giving any kind of advice almost as much as following them: choose well the music that you listen to. In time you'll be grateful.