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Take a Trip Down Memory Lane
How reliable are our memories?
Over the past few months of writing for Medium, I have written a number of album reviews. The majority of these albums go back to the seventies, when I was a teenager. As with most people growing up, music was an important part of my development. My choices were tribal and helped to forge my identity, where I fitted in. It also gave me an introduction to aesthetic experience and the ability of art to change consciousness. When I write about this music from my youth, it often triggers my personal memories of this time. Most are quite arbitrary and random with no logical connection to the music e.g. there are no recollections of first attending a gig when the band played the music etc. It is the random nature of the recollections that sometimes makes it an interesting journey of discovery. I don’t always know which memory lane I will venture down until I have embarked on the sojourn.
Music is a powerful way of triggering memories. We have all had the experience of hearing an old piece of music not heard for a long time, and it immediately conjures times and places when we first heard it or when rooted to its popular moment. The memories flood back. Although particular songs related to different times in our lives can be difficult to hear again or be painful to reexperience. I now avoid hearing any of the music played at my mother’s funeral…
