Music and ghosts

Is it me or is it so that hearing and smell are the most evocative of senses? Me in particular, I find that there's nothing more powerful than a song to trigger the most vivid memories, an actual feeling of being somewhere again for a tiny second before the mind tries to make sense of it, instantly aborting your little teleport in time and space. People's voices and smells in general have that power too. The "ghost" idea I borrowed from Tory Amos' "Putting the damage on", 2:41)

I don't know about you guys, but I have moved a lot in my life. I lost track of all the homes I've had, all the different environments and different groups of friends I have been part of, not to mention all the people that I have met and the places that I have been to while traveling. That creates a lot of material to reminisce about, sometimes you do it on purpose when you have time and are in the mood, but sometimes a song catches you off-guard and there you go, the ghost of that person or place is walking right through you, everything stops, something feels funny inside of your chest (not altogether uncomfortable though) and then you pay the price... This is another borrowed idea, from Counting Crow's this time,"Hey Mrs Potter": "if dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts/the price of the memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings".

Big or small, there is always a price to pay for the memory in as much it is a reminder of the passing of time, which is a very thick subject, so I'm gonna leave it right there, untouched. But it's not always so dramatic. I remember this mixed tape that my brother made just before a trip to Denmark when we were in our teens (a very poppy one for my brother's standards at the time, I must say). We listened to it endlessly every evening after all the sightseeing. When the trip was over, we went back home and I completely forgot about it. Then, a good many years later I found that tape somewhere and played it. What a trip! In an instant every second spent in that flat in Copenhagen got condensed together and then exploded in my mind: the Nutella sandwiches with local hardcore black bread, the backgammon games my brother and I taught ourselves to play after finding a set around the house, the poster of the opera Carmen that hung on the wall, even the slightly humid smell of that tiny apartment... It was a great trip, both the real one and the surrogate one triggered by the song. The tape was so mixed that it's hard to choose a song to do it justice... I'm gonna go for one song that I'm sure you've all heard and also forgotten.

My songs are full of ghosts, my beloved ghosts. I like keeping them trapped in there, all for myself, regardless of what ended up happening. But I try not to lose sight of here and now. I wrote a song with that title a very long time ago together with a person very dear to me. I recorded a video for this post.

Here and now, do not forget. I leave you with a picture of my crazy traveling days in the land where that song was written.