What song takes you home? in anticlimatic

And where might that be, exactly?

I have a few songs that seem to pair with very specific moments throughout my life. These moments are a layer cake of sensual memories in which the song fills the auditory role of Hearing. I can also remember what I was Looking at, what I could Feel- both tactile and emotion- and of course Smell (and Taste, which I combine for some reason).

Where songs are bound, I have a number of homes. The first one that comes solidly to mind is a christmas carol. I suspect a lot of people would have a carol or two on their lists. The one that brings me back hardest, to a frost covered 1986 sash window, is this one:

Every time I listen to this song I am taken away, at light speed, to the smell of my parents first bedroom and the sash window they had right next to the bed. I can feel the cold window glass against my cheek and I can taste the frost on my tongue, that faint whiff of deep, fresh, winter air- sneaking in through the cracks. The feel of an 80s down blanket and pillow, and the warm heartbeat of a full home. Distant sound of my mother in the kitchen. A TV or radio on in the living room. Christmas in a few weeks, and my entire life ahead of me after that…

Then there’s this precious tune:

And I am rolling down the North Carolina interstate as a young man in his very early 20s, everything I own neatly packed into the back seat. Stack of paper maps, and a walkie talkie to communicate with my fellow traveler and brother as we set out to try a life in a warmer place. Smell of summer wind out the window of my car and southern jasmine. Sky high pine trees and invasive vines line the flat sunny roads. Taste of road coffee and marlboro lights. That feeling of rocketing through time and space, in a real spacecraft. It was, in that year, my home on the road.

“Time is a flat cicle.”

I sometimes get this sense that everything that happens leaves some kind of imprint, and although time marches on- in some way, in some sense, every moment that has ever been is somewhere- static and laying, frozen in time. The bedroom window, the road- even after I’m gone, they will have always been, and so will always be.

Last updated May 02, 2024