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Dani recently posted about her musical tastes and where they came from. I got a little wordy in my comment and decided to expand on what I said… Thanks for being the catalyst, Dani!

I think ALL of our senses can trigger memories, but sound and scent are the ones that do the most for my ‘rememberies.’

Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana is easily the most cathartic musical experience I’ve had. The first time I heard it was in the ideal environment. In a club in Albany (The Metro, I think). With it playing loudly. Like, 11 loud. The club had chain link decor, goth trimmings, and every kind of patron you could image. I was just another jerk in the crowd, dancing like an idiot, absorbing the thumping beats. (I love me some big, mindless beats.) The song changes. Something else comes on and it’s different. Very different. Certainly more different than Coke vs. Pepsi. More different than chocolate vs. vanilla. More than floating vs. free-fall. Though I felt like I was in free-fall. The grind, the guitars, the wailing lyrics, the NOISE. I couldn’t understand WTF this guy was singing but I liked it. It struck a chord. And I KNEW it was something BIG. Later I learned the lead singer shares (or rather, shared) my name.

Killing an Arab by The Cure is a close second to the above. The setting: college. Studying in the library. Headphones on. Walkman (the iPod of yesteryear) tuned to the college radio station. I’m reading/writing a report on a book for GFI.

An aside: GFI was the facetiously affectionate term we had for the freshman year class, Great Ideas. It was the liberal arts, make-’em-well-rounded class all frosh had to suffer through. Looking back on it I should have really enjoyed it, but at the time it seemed pointless and boring. Hmm, my astute readers should notice a disparity between the acronym and the actual name of the class. GFI. Great Ideas. You can guess what the ‘F’ stood for. I’ll give you a hint. It starts with ‘F’ and ends in “ucking.” The funniest moment was when the professor actually referred to the class by those three letters. The followup class in the spring was called More Ideas, or MFI. But I digress…

So I’m reading this book I’ve never heard of before, The Stranger, by Albert Camus… When Robert Smith starts whining (that British, Goth-rock plaintive whine he does oh so well) about standing on a beach with a gun in his hand. Odd. Not your typical love song. In fact, it’s not a love song, at all. Though they didn’t tend to have many love songs–would have chafed their Goth style. Then the light bulb goes on over my head. They guy behind me complained… told me to stop thinking so loudly. The song was about the very book I was reading. Freaky coincidence. Never heard the song before. Never really knew about The Cure before. At that moment, I gained a greater respect and appreciation for learning and tying ideas together. It’s not enough to know how to balance your checkbook or the best route to your favorite restaurant, or how to troubleshoot a computer. It’s important to be culturally literate. Though not everyone may feel this way–some may think it’s just useless knowledge. But it’s a part of being a member of society. The shared knowledge. I felt the glimmerings of that feeling sitting there in the library and it’s been growing ever since.

Connecting information together. It’s a good thing. Robert Smith singing about an existential French book. Like Sting mentioning “Just like that old man, in that book by Nabokov” in Don’t Stand So Close to Me. The lyric means nothing unless you know he’s referring to Lolita.

Never Tear Us Apart by INXS, is not as dramatic or life-changing as the two previous ones. It’s more an amusing memory trigger. My high school summer job for those last two summers was as a ride attendant at Waterfun Theme Park. Best. Job. Ever. Liane, do I hear a “Hell yeah!”? In the sun, dealing with customers who were there to have fun, not bitch. Some cuties once in a while to crunch on.

Well, the park had a sound system they piped music through. For a while it was golden oldies. But at some point they switched to pop music. To this day, there are songs off those mix tapes where I JUST EXPECT a certain song to follow. And it feels wrong when the wrong song follows. Anyway… NTUA was on one of the mix tapes and a friend and I would have a laugh each time it came on. Not because of the lyrics or anything, just because I would foolishly lip-synch and swing my arms around during the chorus. Since we all rotated through different positions on the ‘hill’ up on the ride platforms and lookouts on the water slides, we could usually see everyone all the time. (That’s one crappy sentence there.) It was fun. It broke up the day and always made a smile.

Johnny Be Good, or Who Can it Be Now? by Men At Work. Ok, basically anything off the Business As Usual album. That was the first LP I ever bought and I nearly wore it out. There isn’t ONE point in time where I remember something specific about this album, mostly a range of time. Summers off from school. Playing frisbee. Playing Risk and having my friends invariably gang up against me ’cause I’m a cutthroat player and kinda lucky a lot. Just those wistful memories of simpler times.

Scent of stairwells. There is a particular scent that triggers a memory for me. Now, I’m not sure I can describe it… in words… seems like a challenging proposition. But it’s architecture related, specifically stairwell related. Stairwells with rubber and steel, and no doubt adhesive to (in the darkness) bind them. Something in there creates that smell. It’s not unpleasant. Certainly not. Not particularly noteworthy. But something nonetheless that makes me remember time in Canada. I can remember visiting Canadore College in North Bay, Ontario, once and this has stuck with me. It was in a stairwell there. Interestingly, Saratoga Springs Public Library has a stairwell with the same smell. Anytime I ascend those stairs to get to the computer section or biographies, or magazine archives, or just to find a quiet place on my lunch break, I’m also walking back in time.

Sight of contrails. My last remembery is about contrails. Those temporary and unnaturally straight clouds emanating from planes so high you can barely see them. Seeing those in a bright, clear blue sky, makes me think of time spent lying on either my dog’s flat-roofed doghouse (Snoopy-style), or on a hay wagon over by the barn. If I was on the hay wagon, then my dogs would be next to me snoozing in the sun oblivious to the wonder taking place 30,000 feet up in the air. Where were those people going? Where were they coming from? Would I ever go there? Are they looking down on me right now? What are they thinking? Do they know they’re leaving their temporary mark in the sky as they pass silently overhead? What does it look like from up there? Why do some contrails last long and others not? Why do some stay razor straight and others drift lazily like a caterpillar looking for the next leaf?

I’m an only child and had lots of time on my hands as a kid. What with no internet, no video games, no computers, no friends for miles around (I lived on a farm, kind of off the beaten path). So, as feeble as my brain was back then, I was thinking of these things. Constructing my fantasy worlds. Wondering.

This entry was posted Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.