Induced Memories

Check it out -- it's 80 degrees(F) outside right now, but the high tomorrow is only going to be 40. It's hot and sunny today. Tomorrow will be cold and SNOWY. Go figure. That's Colorado weather for ya'! I'm so not ready.

You know how a taste, or a smell, or a sound, or the turn of a phrase will bring back a memory in a powerful way? And with it usually comes a powerful feeling and/or emotion, as well? Yeah, well, that just happened to me. My personal time machine is music. There are songs and certain types of music which correlate with every phase of my life. Hearing that music zaps me back in time in a big way. Sometimes it's ultra wonderful and I just want to linger in it like a sweet dream. Other times it's not so wonderful and I want out of it as fast as I can make myself leave. It's like hypnosis -- music can make me remember and relive things I thought long-forgotten. Does this happen to you? If so, what does it for you?

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Posted by Leigh on October 29, 2003 4:17 PM |

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Thoughts from others

yup... that happens all the time... going through boxes does it for me ... and music... and my poems... lot's of triggers for me. I wish all your memories to be good , sweet memories. Love you, Leigh!

Posted by: Beverly | October 29, 2003 6:28 PM

I think most everyone that has an ounce of compassion gets to feeling sentimental about something from the past. I also think we're all guilty a time or two in our lives... of blocking out painful memories, but once you hear that "music", see a leaf blowing across the lawn, envision a smile... turn another page in a book... those memories of yesterday, just come waltizing right back in.

"Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
memories, sweetened thru the ages just like wine
of holding hands and red bouquets, and twilight trimmed in purple haze, and laughing eyes and simple ways, and quiet nights and gentle days with you..."

Here's hoping your memories are everything happy. ((hugs))

Posted by: CJ | October 29, 2003 7:18 PM

That was lovely, CJ.

I'd have to say that smell is my keenest trigger. Music does it, too, but more slowly. A song will peel back the layers of a memory whereas a smell will put me right there in an instant.

Posted by: Leslie | October 29, 2003 7:47 PM

Music does it for me too. However, I get a strange feeling of deja vu with a certain kind of weather. Often the weather will be such that it transports me back to when I was in London. Even the smell of the light drizzle on the earth.

Posted by: Michelle | October 29, 2003 9:52 PM

"Music sweet music..."

Music be very powerful in effecting the affecting of past emotions, but it is has always been much more than the emotions that have been exhumed by my simply listening to some old tune--music seems, at times, to bring back an entire moment!

It is as if I am given a split-second pass back into who I was in the past--my thoughts, attitude, beliefs, view of the world... all of it! Sometimes I can even feel the way the very air did around me... the smell of the breeze, the way it sounded through the trees...

Yep, powerful stuff music be.

Thank you for sharing on this, Leigh!

Posted by: lorelei | October 31, 2003 6:30 AM

Music will do it for me, but there are smells. I can't even tell you of what exactly that will zap me back in time.

Posted by: Rachel in Alaska | October 31, 2003 2:37 PM

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