The core memory music time-machine
The clock is racing towards midnight, and before long my week off will be no more.
I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room after a day spent gardening, tiding up, and washing clothes – listening to a long forgotten playlist on Spotify, and recalling moments from the past that only music can transport you to.
I curated the playlist while working in Frankfurt. It was a lonely existence – walking the city streets in the late evenings and early mornings with my eyes wide open, and music filling my ears. A friend on the other side of the world had a lot to do with the selections – debating bands, artists and songs endlessly with me – volunteering “oh, remember this?” and “you MUST add that!”.
I remember one night in particular – lost in the crowds of the Christmas market of downtown Frankfurt – surrounded by happy families – children, parents, couples – and feeling tremendously lonely. I pushed some earbuds into my ears, started the playlist, and found myself.
Whenever I hear anything from that playlist now, I’m back there again – sipping hot chocolate, eating stroopwafels, and wandering through the crowds in the old town square.
Spandau Ballet started playing a few moments ago. A fork in the musical road of memories – taking me to a “Rewind” festival perhaps 12 years ago. Tony Hadley closed the show, and I ran to the front of the crowd hand-in-hand with my eldest daughter. She couldn’t see because of the crush of people around us, so I lifted her on to my shoulders just in time to listen to the opening bars of “Through the Barricades”.
There’s something about being there in a crowd. The energy, the good will, and the feel of the music. It was a proper “core memory” moment.
Music unlocks so many memories.
I remember getting home from college and discovering my Dad had bought satellite television. I switched the TV on and went straight to MTV. The Pet Shop Boys were playing – I can remember it as if it was yesterday.
I remember walking around Borders in California with my cousin in the early 1990s, and picking up a record by a singer we had seen on the huge bank of televisions behind the bar we had lunch in that day – she was crossing over from Country to Pop and was everywhere. Her name was Shania Twain.
I remember walking from the aircraft to the terminal at Dallas airport when we visited my Uncle in the early 1980s. There was a giant poster on the side of a sky-scraper in down-town Dallas advertising a John Denver concert. Throughout our stay, his music was everywhere.
I remember the house I grew up in – where we lived until I was five years old – right on the limit of my memories (they say you only start to record memories you can recall from five onwards). Inside the back door was a fridge, and on that fridge stood a radio. I remember my Dad coming home from work one lunchtime, and “Mull of Kintyre” playing on the radio.
It’s amazing, isn’t it – how music can both transport us, and anchor memories. Not just scenes – also the emotions of the moment. The feelings. It’s all very strange, but also quite wonderful.