Guitars, Cadillacs, and Hillbilly Music

Dwight Yoakum Performs a Medley of His Hits

The other day, a friend of mine shared this Dwight Yoakum clip with me.  I smiled the entire way through, thinking of how much I enjoyed the early to mid-1990s going dancing and hanging out with friends at the local bar.  Being young and impetuous, we would stay up late, consume mass quantities of beer and tequila, and dance all night long.  I had such a good time then, and listening to Dwight brought all those good times and good feelings back to me.  This method of profound memory retrieval is one reason why I love music as much as I do. 

I listen to some kind of music each and every day, and my taste runs the gamut of  genres. However, one thing remains constant, the ability of music to vividly recapture a moment in time for me.  For as long as I can remember, music has been present in my life, and I associate certain songs very deeply with memories of people, places and events.  Everytime I hear a particular piece of music that remains directly tied to a part of my past, I am transported back to that particular time and place feeling as if I were experiencing it all over again. 

My sister tells people about what she terms my "amazing ability" to recall a musical artist, the title of a song, and the date of its release.  The only reason I am able to have such a vast storehouse of knowledge regarding songs is that I associate them with certain periods in my life.  If I hear a song by Johnny Cash, George Jones, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn or Conway Twitty, I immediately recall being six years old in Tucson, Arizona playing in the scorching sunshine in the backyard with my sister.  My father, usually working around the house completing his list of weekend "honey do's" and my mother in the kitchen making something delicious for supper, would listen to their country music albums.  I remember the stereo well, the record player stacked high with LPs, and one after another they would drop and provide a soundtrack for my early childhood.  The words would either make me feel happy like George Jones' "Winner Loses All" or sad like Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning Coming Down."  It's truly phenomenal how a melody and lyrics can evoke such intense emotions in a young child, and even more amazing that those feelings remain as intense today over thirty years later.

It is not just country music that sparks my memory either.  The song "Abracadabra" takes me back to 1982 and strolling with my family along the board walk in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  We went swimming until we burned crispy red and then played skiball in the arcade.  "Angel is a Centerfold" by J. Geils Band puts me in my fourth grade classroom at our Christmas party, and looking back, I think it is hilarious that our teacher, Mrs. Small never said a word about the somewhat raunchy lyrics.  Anytime I hear "Faith" by George Michael, I am dancing in the high school cafeteria my junior year with a cute boy, all the while knowing he danced with me as part of a bet between his friends to see who could get the most girls to dance that night, and still having a good time nonetheless.  "Life is a Highway" by Tom Cochrane transports me to my college dorm my sophomore year, dancing amid the mess and clutter, happy just to have finished my finals and knowing summer was right around the corner.  "Moondance" by Van Morrison places me in the tiny kitchen of the first house my sister and I shared after college, dancing closely with my Swedish boyfriend and falling completely in love with him right in that very  moment.  "Silent Night" and "The Holly and the Ivy" will always remind me of holding my babies, rocking them to sleep while singing to them right after they were born.  I will forever associate The Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling" with my renewal of creative energy and determination to get back in touch with my inner self last year.

Music informs every part of my life.  It makes me happy, sad, thoughtful, reflective, and hopeful.  Most importantly, it just makes me feel.  It is those emotions that hold onto the memories and those feelings will allow me to visit the memories in the future when I need to get back in touch with my past. I am grateful for music each and every day.  It touches a part of me, an inexplicably deep aspect of my heart and soul, and allows me to catalogue a lifetime with clarity and precision.  Right now I am listening to One Republic's "Good Life"  which I currently adore, and I do believe that I am inking yet another indelible memory which I can look back upon and smile.