By Diar Turkmani | Staff Writer

Nostalgia. An eerie sensation where we are, somehow, present in a concrete moment while our sensory perceptions transport us, if only fleetingly, to another time period.

Maybe the adverb “fleetingly” should be dwelled on. Because often, when I’m in a nostalgic state, I am irritated by the specificity and intermittence of flashbacks: smells, sounds, words, blurry images. I want to remember the memory in its totality, to be able to relive a moment. But the memories return only fleetingly, arriving only to run away when my brain wants to try and process them.

For me, this anxious feeling is often alleviated when it is accompanied by music – from that period we’re reminiscing about.  In some sense, the concreteness of music transforms this fleeting sensation into one of admiration, appreciation, and love for the past. Music has an impeccable quality of helping us immerse in the past in a very physical way. How powerful.

My motivation to probe the link between nostalgia and music came today after I rediscovered the music I’d listened to during my first few months at AUB. Transitioning from a city like Tripoli – a city that continues to deteriorate because of systemic issues – to a more lively and open city like Beirut was an extremely intimidating process. Friends and family that read this article are familiar with this,  as I tend to bombard my surroundings with just how difficult and dark that process was for me.

However, although quite introspective about this period in general, I realized today that I have a physical detachment from that time. I have lost my recollection of my physical mannerisms, feelings, and actions during this period. I have lost any recollection of the routine I had during such times. Luckily enough, one thing that remained present throughout these times was my Spotify playlist that used to blast music through my phone speakers/earphones.

As soon as I played some of the music I listened to from Fall/Spring 2021-2022, I reconnected with the physicality of that time. I remember exactly the first time I heard Love Is A Gamble by Sneakbo. It was the day after I had returned from Dubai, during my Christmas break. I remember how my sister played the song on our home speaker – nicknamed “Havit” for the jokes (Havit is the company that produced the speakers). I have a full recollection of how I realized I love this song while showering, and I can most definitely smell the cleanliness of our house that day as my sister had made sure it was extra clean upon my arrival – thanks, Nur. I also remember how often I shivered from cold during this period; te2neen had forced us to be “blessed” with electricity only from 5 pm to 11 pm. My sister attempted to create an approach of positivity by claiming we should embrace our lack of electricity as an opportunity to sleep early, and I remember the exact internal conflict I had with myself about just how stupid that was – yet I adhered to her approach and woke up every day at 7 am because I slept at 10:30 pm right before electricity cut off.

All of this is just from one song. Unsurprisingly, the more I delve into music from that period, the more I ‘relive’ specific actions that may be memorable or may be petty. Moments like going to my first concert in Beirut, or waking up panicked in Penrose Room 101 after a long night of studying because I was late to CMPS 200. The weight of the memory itself is irrelevant to Mother Music. Mother Music, unlike Chat-GPT, does not have sentience. It does not always instigate intense emotions, nor remind us of our deepest memories. It simply shoots us back to a time when this specific music was being played and opened up a world we had forgotten existed. What it does do, though, is create a sense of physical presence within that period due to the fact that our sense of sound is completely stimulated, which is something few things tend to do as much as art in all its forms.

Perhaps these shower thoughts yield no value to anyone. However, what we can do is at least thank Spotify for allowing me to be nostalgic for one, but also “intellectually” stimulated at 1.30 am from the comfort of my bed in Paris for two.