Melodies, Memories, and Magic

An exploration of the impact music has had on my life.

Can you partition your life into sections? Such a simple question, but it’s surprisingly complex. What decides the partition heuristic? Of course, this will be different for each person. Maybe one will partition based on major life events, while another will partition based on where they lived. Maybe another will partition their life by who they knew. 

I can take a slightly different approach in this regard, because I often think of partitioning my life based on music. Everyone has their specific music that’s significant to them, but to me certain songs evoke such a strong set of memories attached to the time period in which I discovered them. I tended (at least in the past, although this has kind of changed) to listen to one song non-stop for many days at a time, enjoying it to its fullest before shelving it into my “library.” And it’s this method of listening that has lead to such strong emotional attachment (quite literally, there are some songs I cannot listen to because they will evoke such a strong feeling that I cannot handle) and reaction to them. I consider this phenomenon to become particularly significant from the years 2013-2022, or from ages nine to eighteen. Effectively, before coming to college. 

Some songs are associated with aspirations, goals, and the endless daydreams I would have as a child. Some are associated with broader feelings in general, from bliss to crushing loneliness (there is a particular song that evokes the feeling of raw isolation from the winter of 2021, during the pandemic, that I always think of when I ponder this general phenomenon). Some are associated with particular memories, such as the one song that has me recollect a particular sight of sunny, verdant plains in Tamil Nadu, India, where I was driving, only to see a large colorful temple while passing through, my mind wandering off somewhere else. Some remind me of people, such as my friends at the time. Some remind me of freedom, such as those that evoke feelings of my childhood. And some are just indescribable. 

A common motif amongst all of the pleasant ones is that of the Sun. Specifically, a feeling of warmth, a care-free indulgence in lighthearted play, and the aspirations of a young mind. The stories of magic, wizards, old kingdoms, battles, and grand quests that filled my days at the time. Or the feeling of the dark winter ending, ushering in the bright and sunny days of the summer. Some bring about such raw nostalgia that regardless of my emotional state at the time I will always be beaming with joy at the end. A large collection remind me of my old house, with carpet floors, my old computer and PS4, playing games until the early hours of the morning. Some remind me of middle school, riding the bus with my friends and all the worries I had that were so trivial in retrospect. Some remain only as fleeting melodies in the recesses of my brain, forever lost. 

Some are attached to broader forms of media, such as games or TV shows. A very large chunk of these come from before I was a high-schooler, and are in particular associated with very sunny summer days. Of course, this is a very biased retrospection, but I suppose back then the wintertime was associated more with break than it being dark and gloomy outside. In particular, the soundtracks of games and shows I watched as a child were very formative on my musical preferences. And this is another thing that is interesting to trace: my development of music taste. 

I can trace my enjoyment of the traditional Vedic chant (of the South Indian styles of the yajurvedic recitation) to when I was a baby, where I would be enraptured by the durgā sūktaṁ that my parents would play on a small speaker. How fitting that this was the first sūktaṁ that I learnt later on! Of course, vedapāṭhaṁ (recitation) has a much different feeling when one does it themselves, but I am always elated to hear the chanting of any recension of the yajurveda (although of course now I am partial to my familial recension, the kāṇvaśākha, although there is a strong charm of the taittirīyaśākha-’s long continuous passages). Speaking of traditions, I can of course trace my love of karṇāṭaka saṅgītaṁ (Carnatic music) to having been trained in it since I was young, and the same goes for western classical music, as I learned piano for fifteen years. 

But other things I enjoy are more interesting. 8 or 16-bit music can of course be traced to the games I would play as a child, as I was very into “retro” games such as GameBoy and GameBoy Advance Pokémon titles. In particular, the soundtrack of the FireRed and LeafGreen games, Gold Silver and Crystal games, and Black and White are very nostalgic to me. I can trace my enjoyment of traditional Chinese instruments to both Avatar the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra (the latter to which I can credit my love of Erhu music), which was significant as I watched the former when I was four or five years old with my parents. This was also bolstered by a particular soundtrack that Angry Birds had for lunar new year one year that I would “play sumo” with my Dad to. My love of metal comes from the Naruto and Fairy Tail OST, which quite heavily feature metal guitar and which once again I watched as a young child (around eight to ten, although I grew up watching both as they came out and remember feeling at a loss when both ended). I can credit Naruto once again to introducing me to the sound of the Shakuhachi (although it would be an issyakurokusun, or 一尺六寸 that is present in the Naruto soundtrack) that stayed with me until I was able to start studying the instrument last year.  

It’s hard to distinguish what exactly brings out feeling with regards to music. It’s of course a mix of the essence of the melody itself and memory. But this distinction of causes is quite interesting. For instance, certain prayoga-s of rāga-s stand out to me as quite pleasing, and exploration of these during AlApana is a musical journey in itself. Yet some tracks are “epic” on their own merit, such as the Aksis phase two OST from the Wrath of the Machine raid in Destiny 1, which is one of my favorite tracks from one of my favorite games of all time (it would have to be, for me to have spend three thousand hours of my life playing it during middle school). But this “epicness” is boosted by the nostalgic attachment I have to that particular raid (my favorite one of all the Destiny franchise’s raids) and the people I met through playing the game, the involvement I had with the community and the drive to work together to defeat the ultimate challenge (challenge week on hard mode was quite quite fun). Some tracks just transport you into the world they come from, like the firebending training OST from The Legend of Korra with its wonderful Erhu, or even more significant the Agni Kai soundtracks from the original ATLA. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that music is the most wonderful art form there is for the human mind. What do you think?