ON MUSIC AND MEMORIES

It is always a tiny surprise to me that music can evoke such powerful memories. Flash back with me, if you will, to Christmas break of 1998-99. I had received the three "Lord of the Rings" books for Christmas. I had also purchased two CD's from the punk rock label "Fat Wreck Chords," one of which was Tilt's "'Til It Kills." I read all three of the books while home over break WHILE listening to the CD's. And some of the lyrics went well with the books - the song "Acathisia," for example, has a line that reads "I got these shoes for nothing/And they have lasted me forever/Searching up and down the lost highway."

To this day, I hear that song and can't help but think of Frodo and his friends - this was before the movies, so I call on my own image of what the characters looked like. (Truthfully, they look a little more cartoony in my mind.)

It doesn't end with music and fictional characters, though. Whenever I hear the Bush song "Glycerine," I think of my friend Bob. We worked together at a pizza place as teenagers and would joke about Glycerine being "our song," and we would faux-slow-dance around the kitchen when it came on the radio. Bob died in a car accident in 2000, so hearing that song unexpectedly always makes me think of him and smile (one of my favorite Bob jokes was the classic "If your parents got divorced, would they still be considered brother and sister?") It makes perfect sense that that particular song would evoke memories of that specific person.

Recently, however, the music-mind link seems to be getting out of control. The band The Airborne Toxic Event has a song called "Sometime Around Midnight." The theme of the song seems to be that the protagonist (the song is written in second-person) loved a woman who has gotten away, then he sees her at a bar, so he gets drunk and acts foolish (I'm oversimplifying). I shouldn't relate to much of the song - I don't drink, for one.

When the song comes on, though, I get a very clear image of a friend of mine in Los Angeles. I don't know why I think of her - don't get me wrong, she's worthy of pining over, she's certainly as enchanting as the unnamed girl in the song - but this particular song has no connection to us at all. I've spent no time with her when this song was playing, so it's not like it's a special part of our friendship. Lyrically, she's never left a bar with another guy when I was there, I've never made a drunken scene about her leaving said bar, we were never romantically involved at all (though I've always thought she was beautiful). So there is absolutely no rational reason for her to pop into my mind when I hear the song (and as the song is on my playlist at the creatively-named playlist.com, it's fairly often).

Nevertheless, the song evokes her pretty completely in my mind - and I don't understand why. The only rationale - honestly, the only one - is that the song starts with "And it starts/Sometime around midnight," and my LA friend is the only person I know cool enough to start her social life around midnight. That's it - that's the only reason. Is it a weak and possibly specious link? Probably. Am I impressed with my use of "specious?" You'd better believe it. Did I just look up "specious" to make sure I used it mostly correctly? Absolutely.