Archive for the 'Literate' Category

I have to dis­close a few facts to you before I can fully explain what I’m about to tell you. I’m a sucker for a book series. I have read Harry Pot­ter, the Space Odyssey Series, the Time Odyssey Series, the Rama Series (includ­ing Bright Mes­sen­gers and Dou­ble Full Moon Night), Lord of the Rings, and most recently Twi­light. There is some­thing about series like these that inter­est me. Even if the story isn’t par­tic­u­larly good, I can­not walk away until I have fin­ished everything.

Another fact I need to dis­close is the method which I con­sume music. Although I hon­estly try to change it up, I usu­ally enjoy lis­ten to one album or song at a time over and over. Most recently that has been the album Wichita Line­man by Glen Camp­bell, but in the past has been Black­black, The Broth­ers Bloom sound­track, or these songs.

Some­times these facts unex­pect­edly coex­ist. When a book series and an album inter­sect I can­not divorce the two. They are for­ever deeply con­nected in my mind. So much so that I feel like cry­ing when I hear a song. It reminds me so vividly of the story that has a per­ma­nent place in my heart. It is the long­ing for that moment. The happy mem­ory of your week­end on a Sun­day after­noon. Or the lull after the high of summer.

The first time this hap­pened to me was when I read the first four Harry Pot­ter books dur­ing high school at our apart­ment in Claire­mont, San Diego. I was really into dub at the time espe­cially Scratch Attack by Lee Perry. I lis­tened to that col­lec­tion on repeat for the entire dura­tion of the first four. When­ever I hear the song Scratch Walk­ing I think of Harry sav­ing Ginny in the Cham­ber of Secrets, of the despair of fight­ing against so much dark­ness, of hav­ing fam­ily in your close friends, of the mys­ter­ies of Hogwarts.

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I later felt com­pelled to turn Scratch Attack on while I was read­ing the rest because I could not sep­a­rate Harry Pot­ter from Lee Perry.

This recently hap­pened to me again. I saw the movie The Broth­ers Bloom and became obsessed with its sound­track. I started lis­ten­ing to it on repeat all day. I also was per­suaded to see the first Twi­light movie. I can’t explain why, but see­ing the movie gave me the want to read all of the Twi­light books. And now, for­ever con­nected to the Depart­ment of Safety, the North­west, the town of Forks, the beach at La Push, the Cul­lens’ House, miss­ing Edward, the Vol­turi… is Penelope’s Theme by Nathan John­son. A kind of “Bella’s Lul­laby” if you will.

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I had an Engish teacher in Jr. High who would play dif­fer­ent music for each book we were read­ing to help us to remem­ber it for the tests. Although that was more delib­er­ate, the con­clu­sion is sim­i­lar. I believe the con­nec­tion between the melody and the nar­ra­tive enables me to remem­ber the sto­ries so much more intensely. It is an inad­ver­tent psy­cho­log­i­cal exper­i­ment. Have you had any expe­ri­ence like this? Have you had an unbreak­able con­nec­tion between cer­tain melodies and narratives?