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"But what I’ve lost isn’t just a set of structured sounds, but the world those sounds create, a world you can live inside: Bach on a snowy afternoon, hard blues on a long night’s drive, the background mood in a restaurant or at a party (or, increasingly, any public space not yet colonized by ESPN on flatscreen TVs). Music is color. When you’re young you’re the hero of a movie, and the Heifetz you play in your car or the Velvet Underground you first try out sex to isn’t just background, it’s location and weather. You feel it on your skin." This was one of the most heart-wrenching things I've read, and makes me really thankful for what I have, and if I'm honest, fearful for what I will eventually lose. Music is woven into the happiest and saddest moments of my life, and my most important memories have sounds attached to them - from dancing barefoot on a remote beach in Goa with people I've since come to think of as family, watching the sun rise to the growls of a Roland TB-303, to coping with the loss of someone dear by listening to Radiohead's 'Everything in its Right Place' on repeat for hours on end, curled up on my bedroom floor. I keep a diary - not of places I've visited or things I've eaten, but of moments like these where I've had a powerful connection with people and music. It's an incredibly emotional experience to go back and read through it all - I'm glad I have it, because otherwise I'd start losing bits and pieces of these memories, and with it, my past. I'm incredibly fortunate in that I've been given the opportunity to work on solving this problem, a problem that I'll undoubtedly face as my tinnitus gets worse and a problem that my co-founder has faced for almost two decades. The next time we're having a shitty day at work, we'll only have to read this to keep on going. |
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to having my music memories overwritten; I've been known to leave clubs or bars or turn off the radio if a particularly personal song is playing because I don't want my original memory to be overwritten. My friends don't understand, to them music is just music and something to dance or shout along to. A handful of songs provoke extremely potent memories in my mind of when I was a kid. Hearing these songs is the only channel I have to experiencing that time of my life. The problem, and half of the beauty of it, is that I don't actually know what the songs are until I hear them. I keep intending to compile a list of which songs trigger these memories.
Infact I, along with most people I imagine, have a whole library of songs that read as mile-posts dotting throughout their life. Perhaps a particular song triggers a memory of a summer holiday, or high school party, or road-trips as a kid, or even just what you listened to whilst coding your first successful project.
The single worst thing that can happen to music is for it to be used for advertising. What may be a catch song to a marketer could be someone's last memory of a dead parent or friend. I commend artists, especially Radiohead, who vehemently forbid their music to be used for anything after it's been released. Thom Yorke (I think) did a great interview on the subject but I can't find it, annoyingly.