Music is a Time Machine
by RYAN BUYNAK
One song can instantly transport you back to the past – a specific place and time – even just for a moment.
“The beautiful thing is, music can be like a time machine. One song- the lyrics, the melody, the mood- can take you back to a moment in time like nothing else can.”
― Lisa Schroeder, Chasing Brooklyn
Music is not just beats and rhythms put together and listened to on an everyday basis. Well, some songs may be like that, but music is much more than that. It can change your mood in an instant. It can take you back to a better time, or when you were in a slump, and it can change the way you think about something.
Music can make a memory or vice versa
Important music from our lives can take us back in time by activating key memories, especially if they're strong emotional memories. The right song and the right place is a magical combination, a specific moment in time can be revisited like opening a page in your personal history book. In the same regard, something you thought was of lesser importance can grow overtime because of the soundtrack, so that every time you hear the song attached to that moment it becomes more important.
Music often makes us feel nostalgic
Whenever I hear Delta Spirit's "Bushwick Blues," I vividly remember the excitement and anxiety I had one young summer while juking around Brooklyn (we interviewed Jonathan Jameson from Delta Spirit on the podcast). Even retrospectively bad songs, like “Voodoo” by Godsmack, take me back to picking up my friend Justin Foyil for high school days. And now, listening to my daughter’s music will inevitably be time machines for a future me. See, time is a flat circle.
Time Travel Does Exist
Music is always there, it’s the memory card that returns you to certain checkpoints. From the good memories to the bad. All it takes is a verse, hook, or sample and you’re right back there like you never left. Sometimes all it takes is one note and you're transported to another time, another place. What songs take you back?