Emotional Time Machine

I am about two thirds my way through a Stranger Things re-watch before I get to the final season, and I just watched Season 4, Chapter 4: Dear Billy, a great episode with a strong emotional climax. Without getting into the messy details, Max’s friends use her favourite song, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, to snap her out of a trance state Vecna has her in, by figuring out “music can reach parts of our brain that words don’t”. Now this got me thinking on how the music we listen to is so intertwined with memories and emotions.

One of the happiest memories I have with my father is one of him waking me up early in the morning dancing and dancing with each other on the bed. It was cold, and it was snowing, it might have been Christmas time, or a no school snow-day, or just a regular Sunday morning, I can’t recall exactly. But all I can recall is the feeling of pure joy dancing on the bed with my dad, for no apparent reason at all to Wham!’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. There is absolutely no way I can be unhappy with that song on.

I remember being absolutely terrified of the music video to Thriller, I’ve even had nightmares of Michael Jackson’s yellow eyes or turning into a werewolf. But to this day, it remains one of my favourite songs of all time. Not only because it objectively is one of the greatest songs of all time but there so much of my evolution tied to that song. I’m not afraid of it anymore. I can do the step! I even wanted to wear the iconic red jacket for one Halloween. I overcame my fear of that song and turned it into desire.
This song in particular also relates to the scene in Stranger Things. Early in the season, Max uses her favourite song, listening to it on her Walkman, to isolate herself from her friends when she is feeling down, and at the emotional climax of chapter 4, it’s the same song that breaks through the trance and brings her back to her friends freeing herself and becoming more accepting of the joy she has in her life.

During my depression years, the song Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd got me through some particularly difficult days. It speaks to me in so many ways. Anyone who has ever been depressed, will tell you that it’s not a feeling of sadness, it’s a feeling of numbness. Being Comfortably Numb. It’s like a self synthesized drug, it’s addictive and harmful at the same time. It’s like, choosing to cover up with a cold blanket when there’s a campfire, a few meters away. The song itself, I realized later on, isn’t about depression at all, but to me it’s significance never changed. Every time I listen to it, the song touches my soul, the guitar solo moves me. The song made me feel when I thought I couldn’t.

25 and 30. The two Adele albums came out precisely at the start and end of a beautiful relationship. So much of my love and heartbreak is baked into those two albums. So much so that it’s hard to listen to it frequently. It takes me right back. Slow dancing to When We Were Young, inside jokes to Hello, running my heartache away to Easy on Me, fighting my imagination to Oh My God. I’ve made myself believe that it’s almost prophetic when her music comes out.

I could go on, there are hundreds more examples of songs that move me, that have memories tied to them. In all honesty. every song I’ve listened to has memories, emotions, and moments of my life baked into it. Most take me back to times of similar energy. While some become truly special, so emotionally powerful, I’m almost transported to another dimension revisiting myself in this emotional time machine.
In Stranger Things, music pulls Max back to life. But I don’t have a demon from the Upside-Down on my back. To me, music is a vehicle to understand my feelings, to see myself in the past, to ground me in the present, and point me to who I want to be. Music simply helps me understand who I am.