I wrote two posts last week on how music has the ability to transport us back in time. In those posts I neglected to mention one other thing that is magical about music:
Certain songs have the ability to unite a group of absolute strangers by morphing their individual experiences into a singular memory.
In the rare moments this happens, people aren’t actually celebrating the memories a particular song elicits; they are instead, together, celebrating the idea of memory itself.
This is something akin to nostalgia, but it works on a much higher level. Nostalgia can be manufactured; what I’m speaking of can’t.
This could theoretically happen anywhere, but it is most likely going to occur in a bar or restaurant or party.
Only a select few songs have this power, and as best I can determine, there is no formula a musician can follow for manufacturing one. Instead, it is something magical that happens in the creative process, something inspired, and on the rare occasion it happens, it produces one of the highest goals art can hope to achieve: it unifies the collective whole so that people in the present are actively living the same memory of the past.
Again, to be clear: I do not mean that a popular or memorable song causes all within hearing distance to recollect something from his or her past.
That is obviously going to happen.
For instance, people are always going to sing at the top of their lungs when Sir-Mix-A lot’s “Baby Got Back” or Montel Jordan’s “This is How We Do it” comes on, but that doesn’t mean each person will be sharing in the same moment. Instead, each person will dance ironically and/or tell stories of their own Spring Break experiences with the group they originally came with.
Instead, I mean that the melody and the musical mechanics of a song can actually unite the entire group, so that while each person is ostensibly singing along with their friends, their voices are unconsciously forming a collective group that is lending voice to the moment itself. They are not reflecting on individual memories; they are, together, celebrating the idea of memory itself. And for a short strand of minutes, everyone realizes that they are all connected, that they are all appreciating the moment for the same reasons, that they are all part of something bigger than themselves.
This is why every time a cover band or juke box begins playing a song like Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova” or Coldplay’s “Fix You” the entire bar suddenly stops what it’s doing and comes together as one.
There is something about these songs– it’s certainly not limited to these two; I simply selected these for argument’s sake– that takes a moment, elevates it, and causes each person in the room to feel connected.
Then, as soon as the song ends, everyone goes back to being complete strangers.
But for three and a half minutes, while the Gallagher boys are speaking of their Champagne Supernova in the sky, or when Chris Martin speaks of lights guiding us home, everyone in the room finds themselves singing as one, and each feels connected to the idea of memory instead of to a specific memory itself.
Like I said in the last posts about music, I think this speaks of how our hearts long for beauty and joy, for togetherness, and I think the connected state we find ourselves in for this brief moment is a foretaste of how togetherness– in its perfect state– will feel when we reach the other side.
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