Well, would you look at that? I actually made it to post number two. If I’m being honest, I’m pretty surprised with myself. When I posted last week, I thought there was about a 60/40 chance that it would be my one and only post before I lost interest or realized that I should be keeping a personal journal, rather than an Internet-based blog, since there’s no ‘theme’ to my posts (yet). However, the reason I’ve decided to keep doing this instead of just keeping a personal journal is accountability; it is easier to keep myself accountable and force myself to write something that others (might) see than it is to write just for myself. I still haven’t come up with any kind of recurring theme or anything, and this post, much like last weeks, will still probably be pretty rambling, but bear with me as I find my footing and see if we can figure this out together. One aspect of this blog that I will try to keep consistent though is the fact that I will do little to no editing between writing and posting. I will make sure there’s no glaring spelling or grammatical errors, but as far as structure and whatnot, it will mostly be stream-of-consciousness writing. The reason for this is so that I can gauge my own progress in my ability to un-jumble my thoughts and make my stories more cohesive from their beginnings. This will mean that the first few posts may end up being a bit frustrating to read, as they’ll jump around, but hopefully, as I do this more, the structure will become more and more smooth and easy-to-follow. With this said, let’s jump in to this week’s story.
One of my coworkers came in this morning and despite being exhausted, he was in a fantastic mood, which was a welcome change from his disposition the rest of the week. What was the reason for his change of attitude? He went to his first ever concert last night – he went to see Post Malone. Although I have no interest in Post Malone or his music (except for that one song from Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse – that song’s pretty good), I couldn’t help but share in his excitement. As I listened to him describe his experience – waiting outside the venue for a half hour waiting for the doors to open, going through the metal detectors and getting jostled around in the throngs of people all making their way excitedly toward the merch tables, concession stands, and their seats – it really made me appreciate the power of music. Those aspects of the concert going experience I just mentioned are all aspects of life that, in any other circumstance, you normally wouldn’t be thrilled about (especially if you have any level of social anxiety, which I have a mild case of, and my coworker has a pretty intense case of), but the excitement of being so close to an artist that you admire, and the anticipation of hearing your favorite song live and direct instead of pre-recorded, makes it all worth it.
In addition to the appreciation I found for the power of music (which we’ll come back to later), it also sent me on my own little time-traveling adventure, bringing me back to some of the many concerts I’ve been to in my life. It brought me back to my first ever concert – an outdoor classic rock festival that I went to with my dad to see Blue Oyster Cult, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and REO Speedwagon. It brought me back to my first indoor concert – Trivium, Coheed and Cambria, and Slipknot. It brought me to different parts of the U.S. where I had traveled to for shows – Nashville, Kansas City, Chicago, and Milwaukee all for Ed Sheeran, Kansas City and Detroit for the Rolling Stones, to a jazz night club in New Orleans. All of these memories flooded back, and though every show was unique, those aspects I mentioned before were all there, and they have become what I consider to be “the concert going experience”. Any concert you go to will have some form of “wait for venue opening, go through security, and battle huge crowds of tightly packed people,” but even if you’re one that suffers from social anxiety, any anxiousness all disappears when the house lights go down and you hear the first notes of a familiar song from a favorite band.
This brings us back around to my appreciation for the power of music. Science has told us that the sense of smell is our sense most closely linked with memory, but I respectfully disagree. While I have smelled things that have reminded me of a person, time, or place, it is not as strong as the memories that songs can impart upon me. For me, while smells can remind me abstractly of people or places or times in my life, songs have the power to transport me to specific times and places in my life. Just a few examples of what I mean (and I’m curious if any of you have experienced something similar): Whenever I hear the song “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers, I am back in my sophomore year of high school, running down a rain-soaked road for cross country practice; when I hear “Learn to Fly” by The Foo Fighters, I’m back in Cobb 502 at Central Michigan University playing Rockband with my roommates; and when I hear “There’s Only One Way to Rock” by Sammy Hagar, I’m coming home early from school in 7th grade on a sunny late-Spring day and catching my dad jamming out to it while vacuuming, thinking he had the house to himself. There are many other examples like this that I can think of, but you get the point – music (for me, at least) is the strongest link to memory that I know of and has the power to transport you through time and space in a way that no other artistic medium can.
Another power that I find music possesses above all other arts is its ability to alter your mood and make you forget any problems you may be facing, at least for a short while. Have you ever been having an absolutely terrible day – you woke up late for work, spilled coffee on yourself, forgot an assignment you had due, your car died, and just generally everything that could have gone wrong did – and then your music shuffle graces you with just the right song, and your mood completely changes? That’s one of the best feelings in the world. And the newfound optimism and happiness might not last any longer than the song, but at least for a few minutes, you’ve had a reprieve from an otherwise terrible day. One of the best examples of this particular phenomenon that I have experienced, I experienced as a third-party observer about a year and a half ago.
It was late-summer 2018. My mother was “battling” (I put that in quotations because she wasn’t undergoing any treatments or chemo or anything) stage 4 lung cancer and was pretty quickly deteriorating (she was diagnosed in May and would pass in mid-September). But despite her deteriorating health and her knowledge of her impending demise, she was more concerned with the health and well-being of those in the Caribbean and southeast U.S. that were about to be pummeled by hurricanes. After a while of sitting with her watching the reporters and meteorologists on The Weather Channel analyze and discuss the devastation that these storms were going to bring, I went to go grab us a couple of drinks from the kitchen. While I was gone, The Weather Channel (still for reasons unknown to me), decided to take a break from the reports and play a couple of songs. The song that was playing when I came back in to the living room was one of my mom’s favorites – “Easy (Like Sunday Morning)” by Lionel Richie. When I came back with our drinks, I walked in to see my mom with her eyes closed, smiling and singing along with Lionel. It was as if the song was able to make her forget the doom and gloom facing all of those other citizens, as well as her own predicament, and transport her back to some happier time of her own life. She never knew that I witnessed this, which has made it one of my favorite memories of my mom, and also given me a memory of my own to link to that song.
The next time you turn on your favorite song, try to really think about how it makes you feel and the types of memories you associate with it.
Thank you to anyone that has taken the time to read my ramblings again and has made it this far. I hope that this has been entertaining, or given you something to think about. Until next week, friends!
Musings Of A Struggling Creator 