A song is not bound to the conditions of its creation. As listeners, we bring an awful lot to a track: our own contexts, our sense of place, and our baggage. Listening is a mixture of the intentions from the creator, the listener’s own context and history, and their real-time sense perception. This manifests in a sort of oscillating tango between the present and past, which lives in our memories. We attach the iterative, metamorphic act of meaning-making of listening to events in our lives. Yes, our funny little brains connect music with memories, happenings, people, and our emotional states. For example, if you discover a new album on a trip to Switzerland, when you hear that album later, you might be hit with memories from those rolling Alps. This is known as a ‘reminiscence bump’. Put on Avril Lavigne’s 2007 album The Best Damn Thing if you want to know what it feels like.
If you carry an album with you, new memories will be mixed in over time; the song becomes a collage of times, places, and emotions. The music-memory connection works as a sort of metempsychosis wherein the “spirit” of a piece attaches itself to our own experiences. So, how has COVID-19 changed the shape of this moment of attachment? If listeners are an integral part of a song, then what are we bringing to music during COVID?
We’re in “unprecedented times”, as they say. Though everyone’s situation varies, on the whole we find ourselves in a state of stasis. The monotony of staring at the same four walls every day during a never-ending lockdown changes how we listen to music. Personally, I have nearly nothing new to attach to music—I am not making new memories, I am not wistfully looking out the window while travelling. COVID feels less like an event, and more like an ongoing state of nullity. Rather than attaching music to my present sense perception and reality, I find myself experiencing music through images of past events. Perhaps this results not only from monotony, but from a forced solidarity as well.
Notable absences for musicophiles in this lockdown are the social contexts of music––concerts, or listening to a song with friends. In The Proust Effect: The Senses as Doorways to Lost Memories, Cretien van Campen outlines the social aspects of music, and how it acts as a bridge between people. Concerts and group-listening work as the most impactful ways to experience and attach memories to music, as well as providing a way to create bonds with those around us. In social environments, the spirit of music attaches itself to our relationships, and later on we might associate a song with those we had shared the listening experience with. Other people are very much part of meaning-making when it comes to music. In this sense, the shift to an almost entirely solo listening experience has undoubtedly affected how we consume song.
Maybe you still have close family and friends to enjoy a piece with; or perhaps music has invoked more of an inward fold than an outward spread. In these times, maybe you choose to revisit songs from times before lockdown and recall memories of proximity, while others have leaned into the solitary listening experience and use music as a refuge from monotony. One thing is for sure, we shouldn’t stop listening. Even if your music experience has shifted to a backwards bend to better days, the sensory memories attached to music boost well-being, creativity, and senses of self-worth. As an integral aspect of the music, audiences shape music. Although listening may be done differently during a pandemic, listening and meaning-making can continue to evolve as our situation does. The albums you discover now won’t live in your memory the same way The Best Damn Thing does, and maybe you don’t have as much to metempsychose with a song, but that song can still slap, and you can still make a TikTok dance to disappoint your parents. ■