"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.
Music is like your own personal life-diary that you don't even have to write. Music is such an important trigger for memories (along with smell which is even more powerful but less controllable) but the majority of people seem to take it for granted and make no effort to preserve these memories. It's staggering how hearing a song you haven't heard for 20+ years can immediately put you right back to being a kid, or some other nostalgic memory, even if only fleetingly.
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.
I enjoy music as much as I enjoy looking at a nice painting. It's good, but it's not important to me at all, and I wouldn't miss it for a second if I became unable to enjoy it.
I just thought I'd chuck that in there, because everyone always seems to talk about how important music is to them, and you never hear anyone saying the contrary.
my father was like that. He could take it or leave it, but it certainly wasn't important to him. That comes from both discussion and observation.
I drift in and out of having it be truly meaningful to me, but I would certainly miss it if I could not have it.
Explained simply, music is like color or taste but for the social and some technical portions of the brain. It is both technically thought provoking and emotionally compelling. That is interesting to me, if not important.
The comparison to color and taste describe what music is to me.
Most of the time I don't care too much about what I eat, as long as it's decently tasty. I rarely cook, and often consider eating a bit of a nuisance.
Most of the time I don't go out to see a sunset or notice the colors around me. I don't even bother walking around in the big forest right next to my house. In fact, I sometimes find it a nuisance to leave the house to do what I need to do.
And yet, when I do occasionally feel like eating something I really like, I bother to cook and savor it. And sometimes I get up extra early to ride my bike to the nearby lake and watch the sunrise.
Music's the same for me. I usually put on music that is easy listening while I work, or music that is by now so familiar to me that I know every little detail. Or I go without music an entire day.
But then sometimes I put on something meaningful, and I can spent a decent chunk of time just listening and letting my thoughts drift away.
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.