Is it the memories attached to it or simply the music itself? Good ol' summer days at the beach you spent listening to it on the iPod on a day bed while reading a book or simply the perfect key switches, guitar strumming or picking, the singer's voice, etc?
I was playing Feist's latest album Metals a couple of days ago on my daily commute and realized, much to my disappointment, how hard it is to listen to a track without having any sort of memory cross your mind. Sure, falling for music (and lyrics) is a more valid and lasting reason to love a song but it must be admitted that memories have a way of winning, welcoming themselves to the first few seconds of the intro, making itself a more superior element in the song and in our fondness for it.
The good memories are usually better, giving you nothing but more reason to dance to a tune. The bad ones, however, puts you in a really awkward situation where you feel like dancing in agreement to the music but your head keeps playing scenes you thought have long been forgotten, if not disposed completely.
I loved Metals, and the decision to play it that afternoon was purely out of the desire to listen to good music as opposed to reminiscing. But along came the first track "The Bad In Each Other" and it took me by a bit of a surprise that the record no longer moved me in the way that it used to, and instead transported me back to some of the lowest days of the year where I had played the album on a perpetual loop. And, no, it was not because I was drowning in my sorrows and I needed a depressing track to wallow in (it really isn't a depressing track, by the way), but because Feist was coming to town the next month and I was trying to get familiar with the songs prior to watching her live.
It bewildered my how very fresh the gloom felt, the ache, the butterflies in the stomach, the shaking of my hands, the every single detail I would remember because it was just -that- bad. I hated the feelings. I hated the memories, but still, I loved the album. And I didn't think it was fair that I had all these memories attached to it. That an album so good would only infuse raging anger in me. That I had to let the music lose to some silly, melodramatic story-of-my-life. How guilty that made me feel.
That afternoon, while the album played on, I reconsidered my enjoyment of music. I asked myself why I enjoyed listening to music, and if I had been enjoying it the right way all this time. Did I really like Backstreet Boys? Or did I like them simply because they reminded me of the happier days of my childhood? Are Coldplay really that good, or do I like them simply because it brings back good memories with my cousin (also maybe because it's one of the few bands I had been introduced to as a kid that was good enough to mention today. That saying I liked them sounded cool enough, as if it made me pass as a socially acceptable person in this city)? Does Radiohead make me uneasy for the right reasons?
It was then that I realized I had a habit of immediately involuntarily connecting songs with specific events and/or people, like it was some sort of game.
Burn This City by Franz Ferdinand: Playground 2009.
Bloom by The Paper Kites: my old workplace.
100 Years by Five For Fighting: driving to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to catch a flight back to Jakarta.
Just For Today by India Arie: an old crush. I was particularly disappointed that day over the thought of not having my feelings reciprocated and this song, I had decided, was the least motivation I can get without having to be embarassed.
Sahabat Kecil by Ipang: thought of my best friend and how this song does not make him think of me at all cause he had given the song to some ex. Hahaha.
Home by Michael Buble: not wanting to spend summer 2005 in Jakarta.
I find this really disappointing in the sense that it made me realize I had never given myself a chance to really enjoy music. I was always in such a rush to put music in the background of events, not allowing it to shine for itself. Always so obsessed with making them the soundtrack of everything when truly some songs are standouts in the way that they were created, detached from movie scenes and in that particular sequence of the album. I have been enjoying music way too much for the references it implied to yesterday. Always first to make new songs my past. A memory. When truly it doesn't have to be.
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