Songs and Memories
by Craig Berger
A Facebook friend of mine from UMBC posted this thought the other day as their status:
I have absolutely experienced this and continue to do it all the time.
Most of my "music memory" consists of positive (though shallow) feelings--bright, summer days, no school, and time spent with friends. Yet, there are also songs--many of them upbeat and bright--that my mind links with anxiety. Nearly every time my mom drove me the hour and a half to college from home during my first year--a year in which I navigated quite a bit of homesickness--I remember a Time-Life collection of 1960s hits playing in the car. And even today, when I hear "A Beautiful Morning," by The Rascals, or other songs included in that collection, I still feel nervous and on edge.
I find music's ability to absorb these feelings to be fascinating. Even a song that so happily and explicitly tells me "it's a beautiful morning" transports me to the gray skies that decorated so many of those car rides back to Meadville, Pennsylvania and Allegheny College. I remember my stomach churning more as each mile of snow-spotted landscape whirred by. As I gradually left my place of comfort, "home," to a campus where I was still finding my way, where I still felt alone, the music played on. I suppose that's the power of music: what starts as a complex array of sound waves makes its way to our ears, into our brains, and then becomes inseparably intertwined with those experiences and elements that form the crux of who we are.
While one might think I'd avoid those songs like the plague now, I find myself drawn to that music. Listening to it gives me the opportunity to time-travel, returning to the days when I had far less of an idea of who I was and what I wanted in life, a stage in which many of the young adults with whom I work find themselves. That musical memory also helps me notice that even though I have come a long way in battling homesickness and being able to independently find and enter supportive and loving communities, elements of those early struggles continue to shape my current challenges. I treasure music, especially those iconic songs, because it allows me to continuously explore who I am.
What about you? What songs "freeze you in time?" When you hear them today and "flash back," what comes to mind?
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from the Office of Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
A Facebook friend of mine from UMBC posted this thought the other day as their status:
Amazing, how some songs freeze you in time, flashing you back to an earlier point in your life, regardless of what is happening around you.
I have absolutely experienced this and continue to do it all the time.
Most of my "music memory" consists of positive (though shallow) feelings--bright, summer days, no school, and time spent with friends. Yet, there are also songs--many of them upbeat and bright--that my mind links with anxiety. Nearly every time my mom drove me the hour and a half to college from home during my first year--a year in which I navigated quite a bit of homesickness--I remember a Time-Life collection of 1960s hits playing in the car. And even today, when I hear "A Beautiful Morning," by The Rascals, or other songs included in that collection, I still feel nervous and on edge.
I find music's ability to absorb these feelings to be fascinating. Even a song that so happily and explicitly tells me "it's a beautiful morning" transports me to the gray skies that decorated so many of those car rides back to Meadville, Pennsylvania and Allegheny College. I remember my stomach churning more as each mile of snow-spotted landscape whirred by. As I gradually left my place of comfort, "home," to a campus where I was still finding my way, where I still felt alone, the music played on. I suppose that's the power of music: what starts as a complex array of sound waves makes its way to our ears, into our brains, and then becomes inseparably intertwined with those experiences and elements that form the crux of who we are.
While one might think I'd avoid those songs like the plague now, I find myself drawn to that music. Listening to it gives me the opportunity to time-travel, returning to the days when I had far less of an idea of who I was and what I wanted in life, a stage in which many of the young adults with whom I work find themselves. That musical memory also helps me notice that even though I have come a long way in battling homesickness and being able to independently find and enter supportive and loving communities, elements of those early struggles continue to shape my current challenges. I treasure music, especially those iconic songs, because it allows me to continuously explore who I am.
What about you? What songs "freeze you in time?" When you hear them today and "flash back," what comes to mind?
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from the Office of Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
Posted: January 27, 2013, 7:31 PM