Music and your past…
January 19, 2008
It’s really funny how some good music can stay with you forever and almost become the soundtrack to a part of your life. It evokes certain feelings in you and the same thoughts just keep coming back every time you listen to it. A good tune, a good band has that effect on you and you welcome it.
A record I have came out in 2004 and instantly made a huge impression on me. It was a band I already loved and the music is almost instrumental which somebody like me loves most of the time. That means that I get to put it on and just disappear for a while and let the emotions just take me away. My mind can drift away and be absorbed by the wonderfully emotional songs emanating from my speakers.
This time I had a rough time due to a death in the family and this meant that we would all go back to our homeland for the funeral. I hadn’t been there for a long time and would now get to walk the same steps as I had over decade prior to that.
I was really nervous because I had no idea of how I was going to react when I got there. A large number of my family members would be there and we would spend time together in our home town for the first time in 13 years but it would be under difficult circumstances. I wanted to experience it but at the same time I was dreading it because it would probably be the last time we would do that together in the place where we were born.
Whilst listening to this special record I just closed my eyes every time and imagined my self walking along the streets of my childhood and to be honest it fit perfectly.
If I was going to make a documentary then that is how it would look.
Being there in the end was really strange but quite satisfying. Not ultimately satisfying because I still didn’t get to see certain places that I wanted to and wasn’t able to revisit all my childhood tales, but I left with refreshed memories of my birth place. I had seen it as a grown man and now carry those memories with me all the time. Along with a soundtrack.
(The album is Panopticon by Isis. If you’re into heavier music the definitely check these guys out.)
I found Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica had a similar feeling for me - a soundtrack to a year of discovery and growth; a trip overseas, an expanded view of the world, a “growing up” of sorts in all parts of life. I still feel incredibly nostalgic whenever I hear that album.