This is an unconventional posting for me, but I feel that it deserves its place here. I was thinking today about music in relation to memory. How I got to this train of thought is a little convoluted, but then my thoughts often do tend to bounce around at random.
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about music in film, and I got to thinking about how music plays an extremely important role in setting the tone for particular scenes in a film. Essentially, my music-centric mind turned what was at first a discussion of film, into a theory on music. At a certain point, I got to thinking about the types of music that are appropriate for certain moments in film, and focused on one moment in particular- the moment when someone realizes the death of a loved one.
In this moment, music acts as a soundtrack for the realization of death. It is the backdrop, the mood setter for a scene, in life as well as in film, when a person comes face to face with a reality that is shared by all but strongly rejected and ignored in preparation of the mind by most. I would argue that music, or more generally sound, is one of the strongest triggers for memory. Upon hearing a given song or a certain sound, we are emotionally and mentally transported to a different place- often a specific location in our memories that we attach to the sound.
For instance, when I hear the album Bedtime Stories by Madonna, I immediately imagine myself jumping on a trampoline in my family’s den when I was in second grade: I remember that the trampoline was my mom’s- an exercise fad at the time. I remember singing lyrics, out of breath from jumping, that were well beyond the mental grasp of a 7 year old. I remember the smell of the carpet. I remember the dim lighting. It works the other way around, too. When I think of driving down 880 for my sister’s graduation from UCLA, I immediately think of Imogen Heap’s I Megaphone since that was what I listened to the whole way down- an indication of my often forced and belligerent teenage melancholy.
Here’s where it gets tricky with film, and with depicting a scene in which someone is informed of the death of someone they truly care for. I tried to think about the sounds I remember from the moment when I heard that my brother had died. I can think of nothing. I can’t even see faces in my mind, nor can I recall exactly where we were or anything that I would usually remember about any number of pivotal moments in my life. The last thing I remember clearly from that moment was my mom picking up her cell phone, then slumping over in the passenger seat in front of me and crying.
After that there was no sound, which is striking for many reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, my mother was crying- wailing even. Also, we were on a freeway- there were cars rushing all around us and I’m sure my dad had to screech on his brakes to get to the nearest exit…although I can’t recall. We parked at a Chevron, where I can assume, but can’t remember, there were constant waves of people pulling in and out of the station over the course of however long we were there- which I also cannot remember. We sat on a concrete bench next to the station, and my dad explained to me and to my younger brother, what had happened. I don’t remember what he said. I don’t remember what I said, or if I said anything. I can’t hear anything attached to this moment- which for me is supremely unnerving. What characterizes this memory for me is the absence of sound, although there was most certainly an abundance of sound at the time of the actual event. The fact that there was all of a sudden no sound at all, is what is so unnatural about the realization of death.
This is why I was stumped when trying to think of music for this moment in a film- because if anything, my gut feeling is that there would be no music at all. No booming crescendo, no grating chords, no distorted guitar, no shrill violin, no sound. Because nothing exists in that moment- there is no sound, no place, no time, nobody, not even you, because you are experiencing a true affirmation of the finite. It is one of the rare moments experienced by human kind that becomes the anti-moment; a moment of existence in which existence ceases to be.
-Just a thought, that hopefully provokes some thought in return...
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