Over the holidays I was in my hometown and ran in to an old friend of mine, Darren, that I hadn’t seen since high school. Over the past twenty years we have both led very fulfilling and yet very different lives. As you can guess the thing that reconnected us was music.
Darren started talking about cruising around town listening to music and I swear I was right there with him. He went on to say that whenever he hears one of those songs it takes him back to high school and unleashes a flood of great memories. I was so excited to hear this and pointed out that I’d just written a HearYa article in which I suggested that I chose my all-time favorites for the memories more than for the music itself.
As Darren was talking I couldn’t help but wish for a word to capture this phenomenon; this feeling that only music can elicit¦it could be the sonic equivalent of onomatopoeia. I remember telling him that if Pat Reilly can coin a word like “threepeat” we could and should create a word for this feeling. Without missing a beat, Darren offered up this chestnut: noisestalgia.
Now it could’ve been the beers or the jaeger shots or the timing of it all, but I flipped. Noisestalgia. It’s perfect. I submit from now on whenever anyone wants to talk about the hand in glove association between music and memories they simply refer to it as noisestalgia, as in “I was listening to that Lucero album and got so noisestalgic…remember Woody almost going to blows with that dude at the concert?” It just works.
Now who’s with me?
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Great word and concept. This is how I always feel when I hear the Dead. Certain songs evoke memories from certain shows and people I was with. Now I am getting all noisetalgic.