Musical Genius
March 26, 2020
It’s amazing how a song can take you back in time. I am listening to music as I am writing this and the song changed and I am instantly transported back to my freshman year of college dancing in my dorm room. I didn’t sleep much that year, so there aren’t a whole lot of really solid memories, but that sure is one. I can feel than anxiety pooling off of me as I sit and listen to it and think of the time when I would “dance it out” with my best friends when our classes and life were too much.
The same can be said about songs from when I was in middle school. I would sit in my room and turn the radio onto the popular music station and “do my homework” – I honestly have no idea what I was actually doing, but I am 100% sure it was not doing my homework. I, quite honestly, was probably just sitting in my room willing for the boy I liked to message me and learning the songs so I could sing along with them on the bus and show off to all my friends. Anything from the years of 2007 and 2008 are ingrained in my mind and I can probably still sing every word to every song.
While at the store the other day (yes, before the pandemic broke out) and a song came on over the loud speaker and I was transported back to a summer afternoon in traffic in my dads little white car he lovingly called “whitey tight-y.” The windows are down but I can still smell the citrus gum in his center counsel and the cleaner from my battle with car sickness. We are hungry for dinner so I am pretending to be a waitress and serving my sister different pasta dishes and gulping down imaginary strawberry lemonade.
I was a nanny a couple summers back, and there was a sweet girl I nannied that needed a little extra attention. I often offered her “snuggle time” when she was feeling overwhelmed or upset and I would hold her and rock her and sing to her. It didn’t seem to have been something she had ever experienced before so she ate it up. I sang her kids songs that I could think of, or at least ones that I knew she could catch onto – simple melodies and easy lyrics for her to sing along to. This sweet four year old would rest her head on my shoulder and hum along to these songs that I had learned when I was her age, and hadn’t sang for many years. Even now, every time I hear the “dinky-dink” song all I can think of is that sweet girl and our daily snuggle time.
There is something about music that you really cannot capture in another form of artwork. It is unique in the way that it can make you feel nostalgic or sad or empowered or overjoyed in a mater of minutes. I love that.
