Yesterday I listened to Simon and Garfunkel. It was the first time in more than a year, and the calm it spread through my body surprised even me.
It is never easy to explain how certain music contains so much feelings. Not because of the melody, or any explicitly deep lyrics, but for the associations it brings. Simon and Garfunkel was my fathers favorite band. I remember having the old LP records on the side table even when I was little enough to look up at them from below. When I grew up I never particularly liked them and, like every new generation does, turned to the popular music of the time and learned the names and birthdays of all the members of Backstreet Boys and sang along to the lyrics of All the small things and Nothing else matters.
It was not until many years later I found an old tape with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme that I once again heard the familiar tunes. Maybe it was because of all the water that had flown under the bridges since I last heard it or maybe it was I who had gotten old enough to appreciate it but suddenly my eyes were tearing up. Suddenly I felt the warm smell of my father as he put me and my sister to bed. I felt his warm strength as I lay beside him when he read my good night story from Tin tin and Red Rackham's Treasure. I saw our old living room, I felt the smell of my first baby sister, and then the next one, and the next one, and I scraped my knees on the bark from the apple trees that we used to climb and I had snow inside my gloves and was surrounded by the soft thuds thrusting around in the snow in the winter time and I had the coarse felt from the old couch against the bare skin of my thighs, and I could hear my mom in the kitchen and I knew that everything was right in the world.
The memories rushed back so fast I was numb struck. I was not there anymore; I was back. I was in our living room, I was in the garden wrestling with my sister, I was playing by the brook with my best friend and stealing cherries from the neighbors. The music was like a warm blanket, covering me in my own bitter sweet memories of happy times since long past.
It is true you never know what you have until it is lost. I did not know how care free my life was when I was five. I did not know of my parents struggle with keeping the economy with four kids and only one pay. I did not know of the murder of Olof Palme, the financial crisis of the nineties or the weapon scandal of Bofors and the concept of AIDS was not introduced to me until many years later. My life was not affected of the afflictions of the world. I was happy, although I realize this only in retrospect.
And this night, when I once again closed my eyes and let the music trickle across my mind like the rivulets of a autumn rain, and I realize that I am twenty-four and will soon have kids of my own and that even though I complain about my work, my friends, this city, this country, I shall not forget how happy I am right now.
It is never easy to explain how certain music contains so much feelings. Not because of the melody, or any explicitly deep lyrics, but for the associations it brings. Simon and Garfunkel was my fathers favorite band. I remember having the old LP records on the side table even when I was little enough to look up at them from below. When I grew up I never particularly liked them and, like every new generation does, turned to the popular music of the time and learned the names and birthdays of all the members of Backstreet Boys and sang along to the lyrics of All the small things and Nothing else matters.
It was not until many years later I found an old tape with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme that I once again heard the familiar tunes. Maybe it was because of all the water that had flown under the bridges since I last heard it or maybe it was I who had gotten old enough to appreciate it but suddenly my eyes were tearing up. Suddenly I felt the warm smell of my father as he put me and my sister to bed. I felt his warm strength as I lay beside him when he read my good night story from Tin tin and Red Rackham's Treasure. I saw our old living room, I felt the smell of my first baby sister, and then the next one, and the next one, and I scraped my knees on the bark from the apple trees that we used to climb and I had snow inside my gloves and was surrounded by the soft thuds thrusting around in the snow in the winter time and I had the coarse felt from the old couch against the bare skin of my thighs, and I could hear my mom in the kitchen and I knew that everything was right in the world.
The memories rushed back so fast I was numb struck. I was not there anymore; I was back. I was in our living room, I was in the garden wrestling with my sister, I was playing by the brook with my best friend and stealing cherries from the neighbors. The music was like a warm blanket, covering me in my own bitter sweet memories of happy times since long past.
It is true you never know what you have until it is lost. I did not know how care free my life was when I was five. I did not know of my parents struggle with keeping the economy with four kids and only one pay. I did not know of the murder of Olof Palme, the financial crisis of the nineties or the weapon scandal of Bofors and the concept of AIDS was not introduced to me until many years later. My life was not affected of the afflictions of the world. I was happy, although I realize this only in retrospect.
And this night, when I once again closed my eyes and let the music trickle across my mind like the rivulets of a autumn rain, and I realize that I am twenty-four and will soon have kids of my own and that even though I complain about my work, my friends, this city, this country, I shall not forget how happy I am right now.