Share A Music Inspired Memory | Coursera Community

Share A Music Inspired Memory

Judith
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  • Judith
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When I listen to a certain song or piece of music, it transports me back to the time when that song was popular. Music has the powerful ability to stimulate a memory. I spoke to someone who is caring for his father who has dementia. Whenever he plays one of his recordings, his memory becomes sharp and he can talk about the time he heard the song.

Whenever I hear the gospel song, “This Little Light of Mine”, I am transported to 5th Ave, NYC, walking down the street as part of a civil rights demonstration, marching to the U.N. The person who walked with me and sang with me and looked into my eyes with such hope was Dr Martin Luther King. Whenever I hear that song, I remember this incredible afternoon, how we sang this song together as we walked down the street.

Do you have a song or music you can share with us that transports you to the past?
Please share your memory as well as the music that inspired it.

8 replies

ATP
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In this life, you mean? 

Well sure, me and my elder bro always fighted for the lunchtime tv channel in the early 80’s, since Naturalistic documentaries and Music program overlapped :\

So the most of 80’s music is a way to remember a family. 

Disco-music instead is more of my high school -- I think Music takes most of us to that period.

However some music I listen to today (Trance music), makes use of specific sounds that seem they act on the same brain areas that ignite nostalgy or something, which in some moments makes me feel as if time and space didn’t exist, anywhere in my memory.

when you have an idea, make a prototype as soon as you can (-- Tinkering Tenets --)
Judith
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@ATP, can you listen to Renaissance music and transport yourself to another life at that time?🙂

I keep thinking about what you said, how music of our teenage years is the predominant time it effects us.

Growing up in the city, at a time when transistor radios were a must have, us teens would hang out on street corners, listening to the music.We’d sing along and sometimes even dance on the sidewalks.People would periodically open their windows and shout down to us to be quiet. 

 Trance music is a good example of music being able to transport you...but to where? 

ATP
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I have experience of powerful conscious mind phenomenons so I don’t exclude a mystic experience ignited by music such, that I would sincerely question of w another life renaissance haha

Though, nothing that kind, till now, but something more similar to how music activates memory or other areas I don’t know -- I know Youtube is full of so called Binaural music and ASMR wizards who want to do the job, 

by far, I only notice that Vocal Trance Music (Note which is supposed to be a 120 BPM music, but is taking on a Pseudo-Celtic-Lyric trend which I completely am thrown off XP) -- I mean, some SYNTH notes make me feel as if anything becomes immaterial -- birth and death are in the same momenth and the heaven is here on the ground. Not by chance, is called “Addictive Music”. 

It is a fraction of second, just the time of realizing it - I always wonder where is the “Love” button!

You might want to read a specific chapter from O. Sack’s An Anthtropologist on Mars (n. The Last Hippie) dealing with a person with serious brain injuries who can live only by the songs of his youth. 

when you have an idea, make a prototype as soon as you can (-- Tinkering Tenets --)
K
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Oh, yes it does!! A specific memory for me was in 2001 as I held my great-grandmother’s hand while she was dying. She had Alzheimer’s disease. Amazing Grace came on the radio. Not only did she recognize my mom and I at the very end, you could tell how soothing the song was to her. The memory still gives me goosebumps. I cry nearly every time I hear Amazing Grace--and they aren’t necessarily tears of sorrow.

Judith
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@KateStantonSings , thank you for sharing such a beautiful memory of listening to Amazing Grace with your great grandmother. It had to have given her so much comfort and love.

@ATP , thank you for the reading recommendation. It’s amazing how music can positively effect the human brain.

ATP
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It’s said Music is making math without being aware of making Math (Gottf. Leibnitz). My dreams often refer to having Music as a principle, an idea which I sincerely still find hard to translate into facts. Is that like a ever-dancing habit?

I recently read about a criticism against this anti-Covid solution -- for students to follow school lessons by home, which is uneffective since concepts can’t be fixed using a place or relating it to an emotion which only the school environment (or better, out of the school building » making lessons in the open air) helps to set up. 

I wonder how music can be a help for people like me who has a lot of learning activity online and trying to make the best out of it.  

when you have an idea, make a prototype as soon as you can (-- Tinkering Tenets --)
Judith
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@ATP , you might find this interesting and helpful, using music to increase your productivity,

 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325492

Since movie music has been such an important part of your life, it makes sense that your dreams are musical.

We have been strongly influenced by movies, which help us feel and understand the emotions of scenes and people. When one of my sons played with his Star Wars figures, he always sang the theme music as he played. It was unconscious on his part, but you could see how by singing the music, it  created and heightened the drama .

Movie themes can certainly effect our emotions and perhaps bring us back to when we first saw the movie.

 

ATP
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I wonder I should add sound-effects when I am explaining something: hand-claps, laughs, astonishments and dramatic soundtracks! (my handphone in a pocket) so that everyone would not remember who I am but how I made them feel 

Oh thanks for the suggestion, my desk radio is tuned into a 24H classic station -- sometimes I change so I will try those said examples; even if it’s a background continuous flow, I discover a lot of nice music everytime. For example sacred medieval madrigals (see » Codex Calixtinus).

Your article doesn’t quote Grindcore Metal though?

==========

However, I feel background music is not really the point. Anything below the volume I can distinguish sounds is ok to me, while driving or studying, such that it makes the flow.

I think it deals with something deeper that interfaces with Math as a means to Natural models. When like me you face with an interest in anything, you can’t but realize that you would never get specialized in anything the canonical approach. 

When we fight about what it means about doing exercises, you see I 100% agree that if you undergo some studies and want to get professional, just shut up and study hard; But when your territory is experimental and the academical season is passed away, you’re just alone with your intuition -- and it must be so (can’t always be guided by so else shouldn’t we?).

So I find myself asking, I do understand what I read, sooner or lather, but I’m sure I have to go beyond this and reach a different level of understanding. I’m sure that Music plays a part (or a part that plays Music :D ? ) in this study.  

(Beethoven on-air)   

when you have an idea, make a prototype as soon as you can (-- Tinkering Tenets --)

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