Every once in a while I become fixated on a memory. I mean truly fixated. It's as if I leave where I am and go back to another place and time. A more innocent time, usually--one filled with so many raw emotions. First discoveries, first loves, first loss, etc. I had one of those moments this morning.
As I was preparing for my day, I heard a song I hadn't heard in a long time. It was a Chicago song ("No Tell Lover") and when I think of Chicago I immediately am taken back to the late 70s or early 80s (during the Peter Cetera years) when they ruled the charts with their mellow pop sounds. Anyway, this particular song made me think of a drive I was taking with my grandmother along route 16 from Machias, NY to Olean, NY. To be honest, I doubt that the song was playing during that drive but it may have been. The lyrics have no special meaning to me either to register this memory, but there is something about the mood of the song that took me back to this particular memory. The memory itself isn't even that important. Instead, it's the feeling of being transported back to a time where everyone you love is still alive; where you feel safe; where you have no real worries in life.
It's these memories that I find myself in more and more lately. Is it a sign of getting older? Is it a sign of being blue? I'm not sure but music has a way of triggering these feelings in ways that nothing else seems to register in quite the same way. Pictures don't really do it, talking about the memory doesn't help much either. But the specific sound of a band, of a song...the times just come flooding back.
When the song ends, oftentimes so does the memory--at least the fixation on the memory. It's like waking from a dream you don't want to wake from. Hard as I try to go back, I can't. Unfortunately, we never really can.
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