I have spent a lot of time over the past few days travelling. First I went from grey and dreary (with a few snowflakes that quickly melted into slush) Tallinn, Estonia to Brussels. In Brussels I stayed the night. In the morning, I awoke at 5 am and hopped on the hotel bus to the airport where I headed off to London. After a few hours at London Heathrow, I was once again boarding a plane on my way to LAX. Ten and a half hours later I arrived in th City of Angels. Stayed in LA for the night with the Justesens before jumping onto a bus at Los Angeles Union Station that went over the grapevine to Bakersfield where I moved to a train heading northbound to my final destination of Fresno.
Total travelling time: 2 days
During this trip I obviously spent a lot of time sitting. And thinking. And listening to my iPod. And reminiscing. Reminiscing because music does that to you. It can take you back to another time and another space – memories unleashed from the depths of your mind. Listening to music differs from looking at a photograph because it forces you to sit back, close your eyes and re-experience the sensations of a prior event. It tugs at your heartstrings. You can almost feel teenage summer nights, boyfriends, heartbreak, watching the sun come up in Ibiza, your family, your friends… And music allows you to remember the good, as well as, the bad and that is something that is missing from photographs. Because seriously, when do you have a photograph from a bad event?
On my two days of travelling alone with my thoughts and iPod I got to go on a different kind of journey. A journey through my past. It was all mashed up into this non-ordered sequence of catalogued memories. And it got me thinking of the movie / book High Fidelity. When the main character is reorganising his albums…not in a chronological or alphabetical order — but in autobiographical order.
I really like that idea. To have a soundtrack to your life. Like a photo album that you flip from page to page – memory to memory – track to track – and it covers all those important events. A capturing of time and space that allows you to reencounter things past that is stored rather efficiently in a filing system that only you fully understand.
