Music, its attachment to memories, to pain, and to joy

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The last couple of years I’ve been afraid of listening to songs strongly attached to good memories during bad moments. I’ve been afraid to tarnish the memory, deep in the past, with a disappointing present moment. At the same time, the song could very well return as a long-lost friend to accompany an older me through new memories.

This concern led me to think deeply about how music relates to memories, most of all because I chose to welcome the song back into my life instead of keeping it in a crystal box alongside a cherished memory.

This is a continuation of the ideas that I wrote in a post called “Some questions about music and memory”…

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The hearing sense and its connection to memories

The hearing sense is undoubtedly connected to memory. We learn to associate specific sounds to specific environments across time and space.

But the connections that sounds evoke are not that pure. Usually when a sound evokes an association, it is first and foremost with the direct origin of that sound. For example, just as we hear the gurgle of a pigeon and we associate that with the pigeon, as we hear a specific song, the outermost layer of the combined elements that we associate it with will be the song itself, the band that plays it and maybe the videoclip or other visual content attached to it. What accounts for more complex connections is when the perception of the sound is situated in a particular context.

To continue with the previous example, if we hear the gurgle of a pigeon along with the rustle of trees, and the feeling of a pleasant crisp air in a light but yet not sunny day, we could associate it with summer mornings in a place where we spent summers in our childhood. It’s as if the sound was the final key to connect these two experiences (the one we are experiencing in the present and the buried within our memories) which have a few overlapping qualities, such as the air’s crispness or trees being in full leaf and rustling.

In a parallel manner, if we listen to a song in a context that possesses a few overlapping qualities with a memory that is strongly attached to the song (of course it can be a rather foggy memory along with a crystal clear emotional state) then we will be transported back to that situation. It might even help unearth hitherto forgotten details of the memory. It’s as if the the present situation opened a portal to the past and the music is the ship that will take you through it.

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The difference between mere sound and music when it comes to memory

But a song is not a sound, it is music. Regardless of the listening context, its own intrinsic qualities already contain a lot of evocative power by themselves. Because music is not only about associations, it is about enjoyment and, as it were, a heightened experience of the world, both internal and external.

If the music is good, its sheer power for resonance and emotional conjuration can trump the negativity of a painful memory to which it is attached. In the simplest terms, this happens because even if the song can transport us back to that painful moment, we can still feel and appreciate the intrinsic qualities of the song.

Of course it is not so simple as the memory can be too painful and seemingly ruin the song for us. However, in my opinion there are many cases where it is not that the song itself becomes unlistenable, but that we allow the experiencing of the memory to eclipse our experiencing of the music itself in the present. As the memory engulfs our mind, there will still be sound coming out of our earphones and, in a way, be picked up by our ears. But we will not be aware of it, as we are perceptually trapped inside the memory while the music merely acts as a distant background noise. If we manage to bring down this looming obstacle, then we can concentrate on the music itself and enjoy its qualities again.

And what stems from this possibility is that music can be an instrument for exorcising the demons of our past.

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Music and exorcising bad memories: a gateway to revisiting past memories with an updated perspective

One way in which this can happen relates to the very process of time’s passing. One’s subjective perspective on life’s events evolves as we spend more years on this planet. When we stand in a present far away enough from a painful memory, we can look back at it from our current perspective, which has undergone multiple renewals through the years. As I said before, the music will extend its hand and guide us once again into the memory.

If we have developed maturity and humility, we will look at the memory with more compassion and updated discernment. That is, inevitably we will have a better eye for identifying the causes of what happened and why, what was our fault and what wasn’t, what was the actual gravity of what happened, what where the actual ramifications or consequences, what the use is of still regretting it or re-experiencing the attached emotions, and so on.

During this revisiting, the music remains always alongside us, back into its original receptive state, it becomes infused with our new appraisal of the situation. It becomes a sort of totem encoded with the renewed memory. Plus, it also becomes a symbol of our capacity to both deeply connect with music and overcome that of our past which debilitates us.

Not only that, but the music itself imbues the memory with dignity and beauty, its emotional tone allows to emphasise meaningful elements of the memory and heighten it overall. Ideally, it heightens to an almost larger than life level (this might be a comical comparison, but it is in a way analogous to the background music to a scene in a film).

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Music and exorcising bad memories: connecting present joyful experiences with debilitating memories

Another way it can help us exorcise our demons is by acting as the nexus between a positive experience in the present and a bad memory.

It can happen that we get reacquainted with a song that we had not listened in a while, a song that evokes a bad memory. It can also happen that the situation in which we rediscover it is a positive moment, a memory that we will cherish, such as where we momentarily are at peace with the world, or satisfied with how things turned out, delighted by a surprise or proud of our actions. Even more, the song itself can be one of the causes for making this moment a happier one.

In this case, the song thickens with meaningfulness. Now it is associated to two meaningful memories: one positive and one negative. By connecting past and present (or positive present already on its way to also becoming past), the song can exorcise the negativity of a bad memory. Through the gate opened by the song which connects them, the positive memory enters and floods the bad one with its own redeeming emotions.

The essence of such redemption is the reinforcement of the realisation that life gets better; and what’s more, that even in its ugly moments, it can always be punctuated by the beautiful things of this world, such as, of course, music.

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