Do you remember the smell of your first girlfriend’s perfume? I still remember that perfume. It was distinctive, it smelled both fruity and brimming with youth. It was junior high. I actually smelled that exact perfume just the other day when I was walking down the street. It was unmistakable. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and all the feelings from that first relationship came sweeping forward in waves. I was instantly transported back to that school corridor, walking anxiously to her locker, palms sweaty, catching that first trace of the perfume when I was no less than ten paces from her locker.
Do you remember your first slow-dance song? The one they played during your junior high dance in the gymnasium? The awkward clockwise rotation, the upright game of footsie, the quivering arms over quivering hips, the fear of speaking. Oh god, it was Usher…. “U Got It Bad.” I heard that song recently and all I could think about was that vision of what I was wearing…something stupid, and what she was wearing- a red floral dress with a white sweater. The dark gymnasium with the swarming pinholes of disco-ball light. The people around us are nondescript, they don’t matter to the memory, just me and her.
The recollection of my emotion in that moment is even stronger than the images. I couldn’t resist recalling the precise feeling I had at the time- the excitement of young relationships, the uncertainty of my body cupping hers, the volatility of so many new and unfamiliar emotions. These memories are burned fresh in my mind with a hot brand when I hear this track.
The vivid images of that time, the piercing clarity of the emotions, are inseparable from the song. Usher’s “U Got It Bad” is a pretty good song, in fact it’s a damn fine R&B ballad, yet it holds so much more weight than it should because of these memories.
The power of music and it’s ability to take us back to an exact time, an exact place, and most importantly, an exact state of mind, is something profoundly unique. When I smell a perfume reminiscent of another time, I remember that someone from my past. Although in comparison to the way I feel when listening to a song that’s intractably linked with a memory, it’s slightly blunted. The two don’t compare. A song brings back so many layers, so many complexities. Even if the memory should be bad and the event not so meaningful, time has a way of airbrushing the bad. Then it works to add definition to the backdrop, contrast the colors, contour the lines. Now when I hear a particular song or album I think back on the time wistfully and romantically, even if the event was as mundane as me doing laundry in my apartment back in Manhattan, Kansas after finishing a project. There was something about that precise moment and the music I was listening to that was perfectly suited to one another, or for some strange cosmic reason, became a defining moment in time.
Memory Crusades will be a periodic post I will make where I highlight either an album or song from the past that brings back strong memories, nostalgia, and reverie. Some of the moments I describe you may remember, or maybe you will recall a similar feeling. The first edition of Memory Crusades will follow this post and it will be about the album Is This It? by The Strokes. The premise for why the album sticks in my mind and holds a certain sentimentality might not be clear at first, because the context isn’t the least bit exciting, but I think you’ll find that you can relate once I explain!
