The food of memories?
30 March 2008 @ 11:39
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It is funny how music, certain songs, can encapsulate a time, a feeling, an afternoon. This morning I heard Handbags and Gladrags by the Stereophonics on the radio whilst I put away the clean clothes and tidied our bedroom generally. Once, back at Christmas 2001 - my first Christmas home from University - it was this song that made me pang for my first relationship-type-thing at Uni; now the only pang it makes me feel is a slight irritation that I have to hear it again mixed with a bit of sadness that the Stereophonics turned out to be such a shite band after their impressive first album, Word Gets Around. Some songs transport like a mini airwave bound tardis: 74/75 by an obscure German band zooms me back to 1995, when I was just getting in to music and would shortly fall in love with Blur. Mozart’s 40th takes me to Sunday mornings in Mansfield, papers rustling and the Spectrum ZX bleeping away. Other songs bring back emotionjs tied in with my life with those I have liked or loved. Road Rage by Catatonia makes me think of my first boyfriend, Run by Snow Patrol of the first person I loved, a song called Rhianna makes me think of Chicken. Little bits of love tied in to the notes and verses. Any song by my beloved Manics now feels like it will forever be a part of my teenage self; the grumpy misrabilist in their bedroom writing poetry which at the time seemed as powerful as I thought Plath’s OTT contrivings were, too. Give me Larkin or Dickinson any day - they talk about life, not posturing! Driftwood by Travis reminds me of the death (in a car crash) of a young Irish DJ we all loved on 2FM - I lay in the dark as they played it thinking how easy it is to suddenly die; it still has a sense of the snuffing out of life to me. I realise now that great changes, for me the death of my first dog, don’t have music involved in them. No song reminds me of when Beano died becasue I was too depressed to listen to music at the time. He died in the July, and can clearly say that I began to thaw out of the overwealming mourning around December of the same year, then I listened to the album Lifeblood over and over and over. People say smells bring back the most nostalgia, but for me it is music. You dion’t need to team up with Doctor Who to go back,just crack out Generation Terrorists… |
