By: Zainab Salam, Opinions Editor
Art has a way of preserving time. My favourite albums are basically an auditory photograph of what life was like when they were on repeat; music is a time capsule. Lately, I’ve been packing up my room for a move, and I stumbled upon my collection of CDs that included my favourite songs and my stay-up-all-night companions. Like plenty do while going through their items, I had to listen to some of them. So, I metaphorically and literally wiped the layer of dust that coated my far too-long-neglected shelved memories. And oh my god. Nostalgia hit me like a wave — swept me back in time to revisit all my past crushes, and all my now-dead friendships.
There’s a melancholy in this kind of nostalgia. Music can remind us of what we once were before all of our hopes and aspirations were buried under piles of responsibilities that appear never-ending. But music does more than recall moments; music echoes the past into the present. As cultural historian Jeremy Eichler suggests, music can act as an emotional bridge to the past, carrying forward the resonance of lived experiences in ways that facts or photos alone cannot. In other words, music allows our past self, for a brief while, to interlock itself to our current selves. For a moment, we stand in front of past selves and dialogue.
