Music, Memory and Silence

I have found that part of the experience of listening to certain albums is remembering things that happened when I began listening to a particular album and where I was physically and emotionally. Having first listened to Paul Simon on long car trips as a child, listening to his music brings up memories of those car rides. Likewise, Rubber Soul reminds me of listening to it with my brother, before he went to college. We are nine years apart so this is an older memory for me.

I have managed to associate "Sous Les Etoiles," the French translation of "Under the Stars," with long walks through the corridors of Massachusetts General Hospital the summer before my junior year, because that was when the song was stuck in my head. The vague glitter of the ceiling cemented the connection.

Likewise, when I hear "Heaven Have Mercy" I can picture myself pulling into North Station, the train stop between the commuter rail from my school and the train line that took me to work. The third volume of the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack is part of my memory of walking back to the dorm late at night from the commuter train, as well as walking to art class and painting (we were allowed to listen to our iPods while painting). Snow, quiet, cold, and oil paint, all bound by at times romantic and at other times angst-ridden indie rock/pop lyrics.

Ironically, the music I associate with my conversion immersion is the soundtrack to the movie Amazing Grace (which is about fighting slavery, but has Christian religious undertones). I had been listening to the album quite often that March, and the quiet, yet stirring instrumentals quickly stuck in my head. I remember thinking about one of them, "Triumph," while I was in the shower next to the mikveh, while reminiscing about the people who had supported me in the year and a half of study and prayer leading up to that moment. It was an important moment of reflection that felt almost as significant as the immersion itself, which happened quietly, with no music going through my head. Only focused silence.