Beautiful Celtic sound at the Market.
Instantaneous, in vivid sensory sound, music can literally transport you to another place and another time. We've all experienced this time travel to a past moment in our lives, triggered by a tune. One or two notes and we're filled with a stirring of emotions all tied to a song. For me, more often than not, it is the melody that pokes open a memory portal and before I know it, I find myself surrounded by a clear as day flashback.
Badaboom! I can name that tune in 3 notes....
Music flashbacks for me pack the biggest memory wallop because they clearout all of the other senses like draino and make way for a textured 3 dimensional multi-sensory performance. One poignant song from my past can push back the curtains, lighten the air and heighten the emotions in a split second. Before i know it, I'm seeing, hearing, inhaling the gift of that moment all over again. Faces and events, my surroundings at the time, the stories which are tied to a song reveal themselves in a blink of an eye.
Stumbled, startled, surprised, stepping back.....into an blast of the past...
Sometimes they are painful reminders of loss and trauma .... how time has marched on along with events you never would've predicted. These are the ones I fell into many times over the last 8 months and for a while just had to avoid the music tied to the memories. I find now they are softening. These flashbacks aren't kicking me in the gut as hard anymore. Instead, I can seek them out before they are unpredictably foisted through my sound boundaries and use them as a means for letting go of the hurt. It wasn't so long ago...just a couple of months...... that I wouldn't dare put on a Van Morrison CD. Now, he is back in my repertoire as he should be. I turned off the jarring flashbacks his music created and turned into the smiling nostalgic times I hold close to my heart.
Emotional awakenings pluck the spirit.....
Sometimes music flashbacks lift you up into a joyful dance that begins in the middle of your heart. With a rippling effect, it sends rays of energy through your whole being and out of your limbs. Before you know it, you're belting out the tune along with the musician with a sense of passion you have forgotten existed. Anthem type songs tend to do this best. Good old rock and roll numbers generate this energy, and can rip me right out of my present moment activities, placing me smack dab in the middle of a concert, a party, a crowded club........... to a place where dancing with abandon was embraced with JOY.
Sometimes a song will leave me melting into my favourite chair as the soothing memories massage my temples, leaving warm kisses on my spirit. Just like comfort food, music is food for the soul. These are the songs I love to stumble upon most often. Many seem to tied to soundtracks from movies. There are certain artists too who, guaranteed, will send me spinning slowly back into a place where I belong. From hymns to the soft plucking sound of the guitar, to a orchestral symphony with wide open multi-layered harmony, to the old standards can wrap me up like a fleecy shawl.
Flashbacks are spontaneous in nature. They aren't moments we can purposefully manufacture. Their essence springs from an element of surprise. Whether they lift, soothe or send you soaring down the steepest part of the roller coaster ride, they are moments to treasure. Why? Because they are the play buttons that offer us insight into the split second moments in our lives when we shifted from unknowing to knowing.... from unaware to enlightenment. Personal growth had happened in those moments we reflect upon. Interestingly, whenever we are given the gift of a flashback, we are given the opportunity to stretch our learning again. Growth continues. Life has a way of providing these lessons. Free for the taking.
East Coast Music Awards, Songwriter's Circle.
Stephen Page, Jean-Francois Breau, Damhnait Doyle, Thom Swift and David Myles
This week's Sunday Scribbling's prompt is "Flashback." For more offerings, check out their blog.
6 comments:
...Interestingly, whenever we are given the gift of a flashback, we are given the opportunity to stretch our learning again...
...true indeed...enjoyable and informative post. (^_^)
thank you for sharing these thoughts ... I particularly loved
"Because they are the play buttons that offer us insight into the split second moments in our lives when we shifted from unknowing to knowing.... from unaware to enlightenment."
wise words my friend!
hugs,
d
There are some songs that are like emotional sucker punches for me. I don't realize the effect they have on me and one day I'll hear one of them on the radio and I'll be hurtled back to the past.
There are even some songs that don't evoke my own memories but because they're so definitive of the era in which they're recorded I get flooded with images of that era... I was born in the mid-70s. I have only the haziest of memories of that decade as I turned 4 in 1980... but I hear some material from the 70s and I'm transported back and start experiencing sensory memories of an era I'm far far too young to remember with the level of clarity that I'm remembering them. It's almost scary experiencing that. Great post!
You don't know me - I'm new to this whole thing. I've just been reading some of the scribblings for the week. I think, however, that you are a human being after my own mind. Isn't it wonderful - the gifts that life gives us every day? And as simply as a song... beautiful imagery! It so happens that I wrote a fictional bit about much the same thing... the gift of a moment brought about by music. What a wonderful insight!
Change is an integral aspect of our lives. Each one of us is either at the receiving end of change initiated by others or are instrumental in initiating change ourselves. It becomes absolutely necessary to steer the direction of change in our lives. Without guidance we could end up with something totally undesirable. To understand better about the need for awareness in change, do the article at http://www.oneworldacademy.com/mainpage/gallery/publications/the-need-for-awareness-in-change.php
Music is such a wonderful part of our lives eh? It's wonderful when it takes to memories of our past but lately I am finding that music, different artists and genres, are taking me to new places and part of new memories. What would life be without it!
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