My very first literature course as an undergraduate was with a man named Paul Betz in the fall of 1993. Now, Prof. Betz’s life work was the study of the British romantic poets, in particular William Wordsworth. That first semester of my college experience, we read a lot of things — Coleridge, Hardy, Hopkins, Strindberg, Kate Chopin, but Wordsworth more than anything else. And, I have to say, even though I wasn’t very good at English literature (I know that this is a totally relative statement, but I didn’t feel like I was any good at it), I loved it. The Prelude just held me transfixed through that fall. We’d go sit on the lawn in small groups and discuss Wordsworth’s coming of age in the Lake District–for something like 4 hours a week. Bizarre, I know, but I truly loved it.
So, our friend Wordsworth describes these instances that he calls “spots of time” in which all of the elements of experience and sense and memory come together to take a person back through their lives. (All of you English lit scholars out there, sorry if I’ve butchered this in the shorthand….) At anyrate, spots of time show up in Book XI of The Prelude:
There are in our existence spots of time,
Which with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating Virtue, whence, … our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired
Pretty great, right? I thought so, and I had to wonder whether he was secretly friends with Proust and really liked cookies (think time-travel). But, that’s beside the point.
The Point. Right. So, lately I’ve been consciously spending more time with my music collection than usual — not just letting it float in the background as I usually do, but really listening. In part, I’m doing this to try to pull out some iconic pop culture from the 80s and 90s for a friend. But, really, it’s been a tremendously interesting autobiographical journey. I know exactly where all 3000 songs came from and why I bought them. More importantly, I keep having these crazy sensory experiences that are the closest thing I’ve ever known to spots of time. If Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love” can put me in a beat-up Mustang on a country road at 14, and The Cure’s “Pictures of You” can put me in a convertable Rabbit a little more than 10 years later, what would Wordsworth have done with an ipod?
Inspired by your post, I’ve been trying to do the same thing. The only music that gives me any sense of my past is Pearl Jam and Nirvana…I almost always think about 7th and 8th grade, playing dungeons and dragons, reading comic books, and playing JV baseball. I never really related to the whole Gen X angst and depression, so I’m sure the memories that I attach to those songs are far different from the stereotypical Gen Xer. Listening to Nirvana actually makes me feel happy because of those memories…though I’m not sure that’s what Kurt Cobain had in mind.
Sometimes irony is the best revenge…..
Funny what inspires memories… My teen music was primarily classical due to my aspirations at the time to be a concert violinist. I do remember a few songs and a few artists that transport, but nowhere near 3,000… Lately, the types of flashbacks I have been having have been in relationship to undergraduate history classes. (Any guesses as to why?) I think I had blocked them from my memory for a while. Its intriguing to think about how my history profs presented history now that I am getting closer to being on the other side of the relationship…
Well, it’s not like each and every one of them does it. Just those particular ones that hit you — sort of out of the blue, stomach flips and everything….. Actually, my nose works the same way — the odd scent stops me dead in my tracks, and all of a sudden I’m someplace else. So, if I get that distant distracted look, there’s only a 50% chance I’m having some sort of hereditary neurological event.
I have no history memories, other than a very wise little red-haired woman telling me to make up the answer if I didn’t have one. See where that got us?
Make it up as I go along… Yeah, that sounds like a good plan…