Feeling more in More than a Feeling

I’ve had a funny, yet wistful, experience today. I consider the art I’ve experienced to be a part of my identity. The experiences of the art are embedded in my memory, and re-experiencing the art not only reignites the memories of when I first experienced it, but some of the other times I’ve experienced it, and any of the other subsidiary memories that are connected to it. To give an example of this loose law of association (I’ll call it), I remember driving down Forestbrook road one day with the windows down on a particular balmy day when the smell of burning leaves whisked its way into my car and in my imagination I was immediately transported to memories that had been lying dormant for years, even decades. The result was an experience of a certain kind of wistful painfulness, a longing to return to those memories, a sadness that I couldn’t, and a thoughtful disappointment that even if I could, I’d probably feel, after a while, bored and disappointed at the banality of the memory: this would lend a suspicion to the level of sacredness I had with all my cherished memories. I say all of this for prefatory purposes. The main point I want to get across is this. With the particular art of music, since different musicians can give to songs their own interpretations, approved or disapproved by the original musician, the song itself, connected as it is with my identity, memories, and imagination, can take on a whole new meaning in the medium of these varying interpretations, and can thus effect sudden changes in the identity, memories, and imagination that were already in the song's hold. For example, I will never forget (If I live to be 85 years old, this memory will never leave me) the first time I heard or began to pay conscious attention to a type of music that affected my soul like none other I had heard up to that point in my life. The music was off Boston's first album and I remember each song having a power and poignancy to it that made me feel different than I had ever felt before. It was an experience and memory of beauty to my mind. This experience was in the mid to late 90's. Now, in 2011, I could hear a beautiful acoustic cover of this song by a gifted musician, reignite the memories of the experiences I had when I first listened to the song on that fateful day in the van (Matt J., you know what I'm talking about!), notice the more-than-a-decade span that has intervened since the two events, ponder all that has happened in my life in the interval, and the new interpretation of the song can actually make me notice the pathos of my life as the last years of my youth are slipping away.