As I sit in my room, Air Pods nestled in my ears, all I hear is the pressing sound of silence. I put my playlist on shuffle and await which songs will play, ready to skip to the one I actually want to hear, yet welcoming a challenge: does the playlist know me better than I know myself? Or perhaps it can read my mind, curating the perfect mix of songs that will match the atmosphere of my mood. Today, it seems, the playlist has decided to change my mood, to invite me to smile in spite of the sudden onslaught of sorrow that accompanies this particular song. The animated, isolated percussion begins, followed quickly by the repetitive chords of the piano. Almost instantly I am lifted from my room, no longer in sweatpants, no longer stagnant but moving at almost 70mph.
The 405 freeway is a blur beside me and I change lanes to escape an unbearably slow truck that has been ambling along as though to delay my arrival at my destination. My mom’s car plays Vulfpeck’s “Animal Spirits.” The same song that is simultaneously contained within my head by the constraints of my Air Pods, yet also being filtered through cheap car speakers. I tap my thumbs on the wheel absentmindedly. Every time I travel this route, it is this song that I play to invite memories of another time; instead of my playlist making this choice, it is me.
After returning from my semester abroad in Paris, the transition to life in LA was difficult, exchanging a city I had fallen in love with for one that I felt I no longer knew. One of the first people I saw when I returned was one of my closest friends with whom I had created a playlist while abroad. It has since doubled in size, but at the time every song that was on it reminded me achingly, painfully of Paris. Once I grew more accustomed to normal life, I created a ritual, so to speak. I could listen to the songs without tears springing to my eyes, without the instant pull towards a continent thousands of miles away, one to which I knew I could not return, at least not until after graduation. So while driving along the 405, I started to play the songs which, upon returning to Oberlin, became the initial ache of nostalgia.
There are no tears on the 405. It would undoubtedly be dangerous if there were, but it feels as though they are being shed within. That pain that comes from mourning a loss, from knowing that you have said goodbye to something and cannot return to it, at least at present, is like a fishing hook being plunged into the heart, the fisherman trying to pull his catch but it stubbornly remains, anchored by circumstance.
Instead of tears obscuring my vision, the distorted filter of reminiscence overlays all that I see. The austere exit ramps of the freeway expand, filling out into the grand boulevards of Paris, decorated by cyclists and pedestrians. The occasional LA billboard advertising a new TV show stretches and curves into the shapes of grandiose museums and national monuments – the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the ever-present spire of the Eiffel Tower. I am transported once more, engulfed in two layers of memory, of longing for a place that feels as though it has been taken from me. Now, the slightly stale air of the car around me is suddenly open, fresh, foreign yet familiar. Once again, I have in my ears my Air Pods but I am outside, no longer driving but walking. The 405 has vanished, replaced by tall buildings stretching into the pale blue sky, the bright green of the trees attempting to meet the grey roofs atop five stories of long windows and Juliette balconies.
I walk briskly, not in any particular rush to be somewhere but simply to see all that this city has to offer, to soak in the sunlight and the grandeur and to savor each and every moment before the inevitable day arrives in which I must return to the US. I know in this moment that this will be a special song for me. I know that music is a direct portal into memory, that there are songs that are now and forever connected to moments, places, and people in my life. Each time the synth hops between the final few notes, my thumb reaches for the back button, eager to repeat, to tie this song to this wonderful place in which I have lived for five months.
Now, sitting in my room in Oberlin, the feelings are muted, a blade dulled by the sandpaper of time. Perhaps the scariest thing about savoring through memory is the knowledge that, imminently, inescapably, those memories will grow faint, as will the feelings, the places, the senses associated with them. One day you might find yourself in tears after having been placed directly into a moment you look upon so fondly, only the first note of a song necessary to trigger your tear ducts. The next you might listen to the same song but see that moment from afar, as though through a window and across a meadow, a shadow of what it once was so that no tears spring to your eyes, but the echo of them remains.
So, in the nature of Proust’s madeleine, I use music to revive precious moments, not only reconstructing time, space, and people, but feelings as well. For regrettably, or maybe fortunately, everything must end. The last notes of the song will signal the oncoming silence, the knowledge that the next time the song is played it will not be the same. Or, if not silence, it will beckon the next, a different kind of familiarity, or else something entirely new.
About the author:
Lila Victor is a graduating 3rd year majoring in French and minoring in Creative Writing. She is from LA, a pianist, and enjoys trying new recipes, perfecting old ones (for both baking and cooking), and working on her latté art.
