# Musical memory - Marcel Proust revisited?



## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

I recently bought The Lounge Lizards first album called The Lounge Lizards. They are a unique 80's jazz band with John Lurie (composer and saxophone) and the completely unique and very interesting Arto Lindsay (on guitar). 

Apart from it being great music (in my opinion), a few things started me thinking about musical memory and how it differs from other fields of memory. I was wondering how that is with you all?

Before I played the record just now I didn't know that I already knew the music. I have another album by The Lounge Lizards but expected this one to be new to me. But as I immediately recognized almost all of the music when playing the vinyl I wondered when I must have heard it before. This must have been in the early eighties, so some 35 years ago. This is a long time ago and all the cells in my body must have duplicated several times since then.

Now I don't know about you but my memory is a strange thing. I am thinking of tomorrow most of the time, can't remember most of what happened last week, have a lot of difficulty remembering specifics on people that played a part in my past, don't have that many 'images' of the past in my head etc. (Although I have no trouble remembering a few peculiar specific things).

So most of my memories - and certainly the vivid details of them - seem to have been erased, although I'm aware parts of that can come back when provoked in the right way. Nevertheless I find it astonishing that I can remember music I must have heard a few times so easily and almost fully. 

This reminds me in some way of the scent of his youth that provoked Proust's memories. Scent and music seem to go deep into the brain. Nevertheless there's a big difference. A scent is just a momentary sensation where music is sound stretched in time which to me would seem to be harder to remember (and take up much more brain capacity than 'storing a scent').


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