Play It Again

So, a while ago I found this site called Project Playlist where you can listen to and download legal music (that’s right – legal). It’s pretty fun and as I’ve browsed around other people’s various playlists I have gleefully stumbled across songs I thought had been long forgotten by my brain.

But brains are funny things. Ya know how a song can be unassumingly but so strongly tied to a certain memory that when you hear it, it’s a jarring jolt to your brain like being hit upside the head with a whiffle bat? Yep, me too.

I was listening to some random playlist the other day at work when I heard Limp Bizkit’s He Said She Said and was instantly transported to Vegas, driving down the strip with Brett, Carrie and Tyler. Bright and sunny, windows down, the smell of hot concrete - the memory so vivid my cubicle walls became hazy. Crazy.

I don’t know about y’all, but these memory jolts seem to happen when I least expect them. If I happen to hear Oh What A Night, I would swear it was 1994 again – oh shut up - and I am awkwardly crammed into the loud dim den of Felix’s with Jen and Donna. Or when I catch a few bars of Simon & Garfunkel’s Celia, suddenly it’s Fall and I’m in 305 Whitcomb goofily keeping tempo on a pumpkin (don’t ask – don’t judge).

Sometimes a song doesn’t bring up a particular moment but more of a time period. Like, whenever I hear Moby’s Honey, or Venga Boys’ We Like to Party, I can’t help reminiscing about my grad school days. It’s inevitable. You just have to submit to the moment of nostalgia until the song passes.

There are also the songs forever to be associated with break-ups and deaths and disappointments, which, even if I’m in a spectacular mood, can bring me down with one sharp jab to my gut. Powerful stuff these song memories. Not quite as powerful as smell memories (ahhhh…chunky smell – you know what I’m talking about Bethany!), but almost.