Music Makes the Memory
Each and every first kiss, moments of awe over a friend’s audacious confidence, a forever stretch of familiar road… I now see that most of my vivid memories have a song attached to them in a way that amplifies both the ache and the joy.
I am late to the game in discovering this, as it just occurred to me when my daughter created a movie about the memories made at 1530 Ben Roe Drive, the epicenter of our family life until now. She included audio files of the tinkling wind chimes on the porch and the moan of the front door as it creaked while opening. She added voice memos of fun family banter and recent video interviews of my parents as they reflected on their lives. But the centerpiece of this masterpiece was the home video juxtaposition of our respective childhoods at that same address, with my generation’s footage originally on 8MM film and hers on mini-DVD.
Watching it left me predictably emotional, but what fascinated me was the part of the film where she overlayed the song “Stacks” by Bon Iver, an artist I don’t even know, that built up the emotion to a crescendo, allowing it to travel from inside of me to the outside for a cathartic release.
You may be thinking, duh Shana, this is the very reason that plays have orchestras and films have scores. To that I say, don’t be a jerk—let me understand the world on my own timeline.
This new discovery has me pondering how music has helped form the memories that make up my life, giving me a soundtrack to structure the timeline.
The early songs are the ones that came to me by force in the years that my parents bought the records, eight-track tapes, and eventually cassettes that were played in our home and in their cars. Our eternally long road trips to Bakersfield, where my brother and I whined and fought and just generally suffered and caused suffering were framed, ironically, to the perky beat and lyrics of Anne Murray’s “Snowbird.” During that phase of life, all I could hope was that my brother would make like that snowbird and spread his tiny wings and fly… the hell away from me.
There’s irony, too in my memory that John Denver’s “Looking for Space” played while he and I dusted up over his daring to cross the invisible line in the back seat of the car, resulting in me screaming like a jackass, “He’s on my side!” I meant these words literally, of course, because the metaphorical connotation couldn’t have been further from the truth.
In junior high, the music was now of my own choosing since I had a record player in my room to spin the albums and 45s with those funky plastic adaptors. Lynda K and I would make up dances in my sweltering upstairs bedroom to songs like “Disco Inferno” while wearing our Ditto’s and Chemin de Fer jeans, shaking our groove things and feeling very grown up. I remember, too, a party where my friend Lisa and I did a pantomime dance to Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” to the delight of all the shy girls who wouldn’t be so bold as to perform in front of a group. Then there was Cindy R’s performance of “Stairway to Heaven” in front of the entire school, which still today feels so badass for that awkward age when peers tend to be so savage.
My high school musical memories include watching girls bravely perform the Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat” while wearing nothing but bath towels, just like the band on the album cover. I remember driving the streets of Sunnyvale on so many weekends with Molly, looking for a party while playing our Duran Duran cassette until the song titles wore off the front and the tape itself snapped. There’s a family vacation to Newport Beach tied to Madonna’s “Holiday.” I got to bring Barb and Molly on the trip and we were about as tan and cute as we could be as we strutted to the beach with our boom box blasting the song. I have fun memories, too, with my cousins when we went to a pizza place without our parents and kept playing “Brick House” on the juke box, which made us feel maybe naughty and grown up as we giggled at the very prospect of being mighty, mighty and letting it all hang out.
My connection to music got decidedly more complicated the night I was sexually assaulted while Sade’s “Smooth Operator” played in the background. In fact, it just now occurred to me that this song may be the reason I avoid 80s radio stations – perhaps by subconscious design – so I will never have the song sneak up on me while driving to Costco.
But even after that night, my relationship to music was no longer solely a bridge to fun and funny times. In my late teens and early 20s, it felt like my friends started experimenting with other genres while I remained a loyal Top 40 gal. Some of them went the edgy route by listening to bands like the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols while others went full granola with the Grateful Dead and that ilk. The few times I went with these friends to their concerts, I felt like such an outsider. It was as if I were one of Nancy Reagan’s ambassadors to the “Just Say ‘No’” brigade when everyone else was out there saying “hell yes.” I spent plenty of nights swooning to Lionel Ritchie and dancing to Wham and Whitney Houston on my Walkman, wondering why I wasn’t cool.
Eventually I realized that I was better off hanging out with people who shared my interests and I stopped identifying as the proverbial square peg trying to fit in the round hole. Soon after, I fell in love with my husband as we discovered the overlap in our Venn diagram of music and listened to a lot of James Taylor, Jackson Brown, and REO Speedwagon. Russ tried relentlessly to make Lyle Lovett mutual, too, but I insisted Lyle stay on Russ’ side of the Venn. There’s plenty of questionable company over there, which brings me to one of Russ’ favorite pastimes: asking me to name the musician of any song I can’t stand, just to hear my never-changing, exasperated answer, “Led Zeppelin.” With Russ at my side, I knew I was loved without condition and never again felt pressure to join a mosh pit or dance like a smelly zombie at a festival.
When our children arrived, suddenly our CD player was no longer our own. It was all about Raffi and Barney, and then slowly transitioned to Hilary Duff, Hannah Montana, and High School Musical.
Before I knew it, there were boy bands and rappers – something I had trained my whole young adult life for – and I would sing and chair-dance while driving the carpools. I even rekindled my pantomime dance moves to Justin Bieber’s “What Do You Mean,” making me an icon or an eyesore depending on who was riding shotgun at the time.
Then, my nest emptied and my playlist sort of froze in time to the hits that had fit – if barely – into the Venn center for my kids and me. There would be no additions of whatever the next fun Flo Rida song might be. It’s just me and the old hits from 2006-2015 now when I step on that damn elliptical or when I am feeling festive in the kitchen cooking dinner and dropping it sort of low to the song “Low” like I’m wearing some apple-bottom jeans and boots with the fur while cooking the quinoa.
My music selections are leaning toward angsty, these days, after grieving my empty nest, my naivete about politics, and now my mom. Instead of songs that make me want to dance, I am identifying with songs that make me want to cry. Songs like Pink’s “What About Us” and Adele’s “Easy on Me.”
When I am ready to really go there, I will dare to push “play” on the playlist I made for my mom when she was in memory care. I made it for her after watching what happened the first time a singer came into the room to play the old classics for the residents. These were people who often seemed either agitated or utterly absent most of the time. But when Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, or Patsy Cline songs were played, they were brought back to life and back to hope for a while. The memories and emotions I experienced by taking in this fascinating but heartbreaking phenomenon make me want to stick to podcasts for a bit longer so I might tickle my brain instead of my heart for a while, which is still on edge with loss.
When I want to lighten my own spirits, I chuckle thinking about how they will ever decide on the classics when my generation gets to memory care. With exponentially more artists and songs in the world today, how will they ever come to consensus on what constituted good music back in our day?
I mean, they might just try to play one of the many “Led Zeppelins” for me when I would rather hear my boy Biebs.
