CONNECTION - Tracks of My Years
Every so often a song comes on and something strange happens.
For a few moments, time folds in on itself.
You are no longer just listening to a track.
You are sitting in the same room as someone you used to be.
The song is the bridge.
The track carries you back.
Back to a particular year.
A particular place.
A particular version of yourself.
The teenager.
The student.
The young father.
The newly bereaved son.
The person who thought life was going to turn out a certain way.
We often think songs remind us of memories.
I'm not sure they do.
I think they remind us of people.
Not the artist.
Not the band.
Ourselves.
The version of us that first heard the song.
The version who played it repeatedly.
The version who attached hopes, dreams, fears and expectations to those three or four minutes of music.
And then something interesting happens.
The track takes us back and we start judging each other.
The younger version looks at us now.
At the choices we made.
The dreams we followed.
The dreams we abandoned.
The life we built.
The person we became.
We look back at them too.
Their certainty.
Their confidence.
Their naivety.
Their belief that life would eventually arrive with a fanfare of trumpets and everything would make sense.
Neither side gets off lightly.
Sometimes there is pride.
Sometimes disappointment.
Sometimes gratitude.
Sometimes grief.
Most often there is a mixture of all four.
Because the truth is that every record collection contains more than records.
It contains people.
Versions of ourselves preserved in songs.
Waiting patiently for us to hear them again.
The strange thing is that once you've met them, you can't unmeet them.
Because they are not strangers.
They are not memories.
They are you.
And you are them.
Perhaps that is why music matters.
Not because it reminds us of the past.
But because it allows conversations that would otherwise never happen.
Conversations between the person we were.
The person we hoped to become.
And the person who eventually arrived.
In the end, it was never really about the record collection.
It was about the conversations.
Not with the artists.
Not with the songs.
But with the people who owned them.
