By Louie Ferrera

Research has shown that the most effective way to conjure up an old memory is through the sense of smell. Well, the researchers never got around to my house because for me it’s always been music.

Growing up in a house where music was always playing in the background; on the radio, on the stereo or my mom singing, my brain is hard wired to respond to music. Mom once told me that when she listens to music she feels it throughout her entire body. Like mother like son. For her it was Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, for me it’s Neil Young and The Beatles. My connection to music is as visceral for me as it was for mom.

There’s a direct line in my brain from music to memory that’s always open and just waiting for a song to bring it to life. Hearing that song at the right time will literally bring me to a specific moment from my past. I’m not only there, but I feel the memory and everything associated with it. Sometimes it’s a very specific moment in time that I shared with a friend, family member or lover, other times the memory will be of a more general period in my life when I was happy, sad, content, searching… Either way the effect is immediate, like a switch has been flipped in my brain. I’m amazed at how a sappy love song, by of all people Alice Cooper, can conjure up such a sun burnished memory for me.  My song memories run the gamut of human emotions; sad and melancholy, blissful and elated, unrequited longing. I try and go with whatever comes up and ride it out, feeling the emotion as deeply as I can. I rarely put on a song intentionally to re-experience the moment it reminds me of. Like seeing a shooting star or an unexpected spotting of wildlife while out in nature, I think song memories are most effective when they’re least expected. They can come from anywhere and at anytime; on a Spotify mix, at a concert, while grocery shopping or even just a snippet of song heard through the window of a passing car. It doesn’t take much to flip my song memory switch.

I won’t bore you with my song memories, after all they’re my memories and won’t have anything to do with any experience you may have had with a song, unless of course it’s a shared song memory. I’ve got several of those so if you’re reading this perhaps we were along for a musical ride together sometime in our past.

Song memories do occasionally change. Has this happened to you? Typically for me the song and the memory are inextricably linked but it has happened when I’ll have a new experience with a song that will supplant my old song memory. Like all memories, song memories fade too. A one-time vivid memory I have with a song can get washed out like the colors on an old Polaroid photograph, the memory is still there but its intensity diluted, the song just doesn’t have the same power that it used to. However I’m also finding that some of my deepest song memories grow stronger with time. I said I wasn’t going to bore you with any of my specific song memories, but indulge just me once here, ok? 

From the first notes of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, I’m immediately transported under the canopy of a mixed redwood, oak and bay laurel forest. The light is dappled and green, the air warm and pleasant on this July afternoon. There’s an impossibly beautiful woman in my arms wearing a wedding dress, we’re surrounded by all of our closest friends and family. Carol and I twirl gracefully as the strains of Let’s Stay Together echo through the forest. Everyone is smiling, we’re as happy as we’ve ever been because we’re beginning  our life together. Like I said, my song memories are powerful!