Time and Music

Do you know that feeling-when you listen to a song, and it just transports you back to that time and place when you last heard it... Maybe not even the last time you heard it, but that period of time when you listened to that song.. and suddenly this rush of feelings comes back to you, and it's like you're back there- back to those strange, joyous, confusing, exciting, awful, crazy times in your life. and it's often times overwhelming. But, it's incredible at the same time. Because, for 2 or 3 minutes, you get to go back there. You get to fully realize and appreciate everything you were experiencing at that specific time in your life.

I heard somewhere that music is the closest thing we have to time travel, and I am in love with that observation. How true and profound it is...

I realized completely how deeply these songs of my past move me, just recently- when I listened to this song

And suddenly, while I was driving home from work, I was taken back to the spring of my senior year in high school. I was out on break, and I was driving up north with my family to visit college campuses. I remember  looking out of the car window and seeing the coast and the pink sky melting into the blue sea. I remember the palm trees in Santa Barbara and the cozy bar in Santa Cruz. I remember feeling so insanely excited that I was about to move away and begin my life. I also remember feeling terrified. 

And that song, that song that I listened to all spring break, that song whose lyrics or sound really had nothing to do with anything that was going on in my life- somehow became so closely and intensely related to everything in my life at that time. That song, to me now, is about that time in my life.  

Sometimes I even find myself listening to my new anthem of the moment, and imagining myself a few months or years or decades from now listening to it, and how it will make me feel. Like almost time traveling into the future. 

It's mind-blowing and wonderful how powerful music can be. 

I'm not sure if I'm the first or the millionth person to realize that my music library is a time machine. 

I'd love to know- how related are time and music to you?