Remembering

In last Thursday's class we were asked what in everyday life has the power to take us back to another time in our minds. I think a lot about this because I tend to be a nostalgic person. I think a lot about the past, mostly, I think, because I haven't been able to keep my childhood with me in a sense. My mom was in the military for 23 years and, as a result, we were never in the same place for too long. I wasn't able to keep those relationships with old friends and fun places like I could have had I stayed in Hawaii or Tennessee or Alaska.

Music is hugely important in my life now as it was in my childhood. My parents are music lovers and I grew up listening to their favorite music mostly. Most anything by The Beatles, Queen, George Throughgood, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Elton John, or John Hartford has the ability to take me back to my childhood. I remember once when my little sister Melissa was about 2 we were in the car on the way to a birthday dinner at Red Lobster when Queen's song "We are the Champions" came on. In the song there's a part where they sing "No time for losers, cause we are the champions, of the world." My sister sang the line as "beluga, beluga, we are the champions" and I laughed hysterically. Every time I hear that song, that moment in the car is the one I think of.

One of my proudest moments, musically at least, was when I, along with my high school choir, got to sing J.S. Bach's "Magnificat" and Montiverdi's "Gloria" in NYC's Carnegie Hall. There was a song within the "Magnificat" called "Si Cut Locutus Est". We got the part in the song where finally, all 7 voices are singing together and the conductor got taken over by the power of our voices in that historic space and just went nuts. Jumping and waving his arms. My feeling at that moment is one that I am able to recall just by hearing the song.

Also, for some reason, smells can really bring me back to a time or place. I was visiting a friend in Alabama this summer after not being in the south for 9 years and immediately the smell brought me back to when I lived in Tennessee. The smell of spray paint reminds me of working on Homecoming floats at my high school in Alaska. And the smell of Victoria's Secret perfume "Love Spell" reminds me of my friend Sally Ann.

I've had moments when, like Mole, I catch a smell of something that I recognize but I can't put my finger on why I recognize it. Is it from an old school? An old house? I don't know. But the power of our memory when reminded by external stimuli is pretty amazing. Sometimes just the power of those recollections is enough to make me get teary-eyed in my nostalgia.