Time Travel With Music

I spent last week in Maui, Hawaii. 

One evening, I found myself alone on a small beach. I watched the sunset. It was one of my favorite moments of the trip. 

Now I’m sitting at my desk, a few days after the trip, struggling to put this stunning memory into words. 

I look to music to bring me back to the scene and the magic I felt. 

At the beach, I listened to Hans Zimmer’s Time on repeat on my earphones.

This piece of music is the ocean. Progressive, repetitive, eternal. Two notes are always paired up. They echo. They play. They dance to the resolute frequency of the ocean, whose vast energy makes everything else seem frail.

I play the music again. My senses are teleported back to the beach and the sunset. 

A giant canvas fills up my entire visual space. Two distinct textures blend together at the horizon. The upper one is a still-life. Splashed with orange paint; ornated with white clouds and their golden rims. The lower one features the calm movement of heaves of blue sparkles, with gentle waves caressing the sandy beach nearby.  

Woken up by the tunes, my subconsciousness comes to life. I feel exactly how the ocean made me feel at the beach: tender, mighty, enchanted, vast, ceaseless, beautiful, larger than life.

Sounds reach places you can’t quite reach with language. It helps you get inside the gaps between feelings with known names. It allows you to wander around, get to the right spot and stay there. 

Music is my time travel machine to visit past experiences. Sensations attach to the tune like pins stick to magnets. If music was present, that particular memory owns its soundtrack. 

When the right tune plays, I can smell the damp and fresh woods on my hike, feel the crisp morning air on my skin, hear the cadence of my footsteps during my run, and see the smile on people’s faces in a carefree summer.  Songs bring me closest to the source of my feelings.

Music converts transient feelings into frames. It wakes up senses inside you so you can relive them. 

This masterpiece moved many listeners. Each has one’s own association. Two Youtube comments took me into their person’s mind space.

When the world is over, this song will play in the credits.

We are not making love here. We are conceiving; making life.

Give it a listen. Where does it take you to?