Music and Memories
I had a surreal experience the other day. It was linked to an experience I had ten years ago. It was a summer I thought I would never forget.
A group of friends and I set off on an adventure.
A text I sent to a good friend reads:
A group of elemental beings shall embark on an adventure to seek unknown colours and understand vibrations. To follow the path curved into the cosmos.
Sent 2013
This image from taken in January 2013 on a disposable camera at a location we camped along the Murray Darling River.
I’ve always found the different music scenes to be quite fascinating. Not only is the genre dictated by rhythm, beats and tempo. Genres are also defined by clothing, attitudes and settings, which makes live events totally immersive.
This adventure was in pursuit of and fueled by the music that would put you in a hypnotic trance of numbed-out bliss if you let it. It was an adventure that started with me for the first time feeling like I fully belonged, too ending with me feeling lost and alone.
However, this is not the music that I associate with the memory of that time.
The music that brings me back to that time was an album we played on the way home to soothe our eardrums. It was an album I continued to play during the emotionally chaotic months that followed.
One day during this time I remember standing there and feeling like I was falling. I believe this is the feeling of hitting rock bottom shortly after feeling on top of the world.
Some artists focus on finding beauty through organised sound and vibration. While other artists seek to invoke strong emotions. Some genres succeed at one better than the other. Some artists succeed at both.
The artist of this album mastered both the beauty of vibration and the emotional depth we’re often too afraid to feel.
I’m sure you have had times or phases in your life that was embued with an anthem, maybe a song, album or whole genre, and the corresponding style…or maybe just the memories and emotions.
Similarly, I’m sure like me you have long forgotten those songs, and possibly even that phase of your life…until you hear those songs again, and at that moment all the memories, emotions and experiences come rushing back in. And for a moment or maybe even the whole song you reflect on that past version of yourself, I know I did.
A few days ago I heard that album again. I recognised the lyrics, the rhythm and the sound. Kind of like seeing someone you haven’t seen in ten years. You recognise them, their energy, the look in their eyes. But you can’t quite remember their name or when you last saw them…until you are reminded, and then suddenly you remember everything.
The beauty of music is that it will sound exactly the same as the day you first heard it and the day that your memories became infused with its vibrations.
I also find there is a kind of therapy to these memories, either because we can recognise how far we have come or because we remember who we used to be, or maybe both.
For me, it was both. Hearing those songs again closed the loop on a personal journey I had been on for too long, ten years if I’m counting.
This image from taken in January 2013 on a disposable camera at the Rainbow Serpent Festival.
It was surreal because as it happened the same album playing during that time ten years ago when I lost myself, then played again during the moments I found myself, and I promised it wasn’t planned…at least not by me.
If you have gotten to this point, you deserve to know that the album I’m referring to is Fallen Light by Phaelah.