How we remember things is very interesting. "Somehow when we are telling our memories to someone else, we are changing them at the same time", someone told me this, and it is indeed quite true. While telling the stories, sometimes we may create some fake memories, to make the story more interesting to the audiences or to cover the ugly truth. The more we tell the story, eventually we will convince ourselves that the fake one is real, and finally replace the reality.
Not long ago, by chance, I discovered a youtube channel of a blindman via Vsause. He shares his experiences of blindness, and my mind was blown first time watching his videos. A good book is a page-turner, then his channel is a video-turners. And here is one of his videos talking about his dreams.
People say photo is the best way to conserve memories. After watching the video, I guess it works only for sighted-people. Plus people tend to post, to bring out the biggest smile on their faces, or to pretend to be a person they want to be. So it doesn't really represent quite right the moment when the photo is taken. Often, the most intense, the most important, emotional memories are not photographed.
In the world nowadays, we are so bounded by visual-based stuffs, that we often forget the other 4 senses. Here is a Vsauce video about how many photos have been taken.
Then I realized, some of my memories, good or bad, but surely intense, are captured through songs. And hearing these songs can always bring up the corresponding memories.
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Me sitting at the back of my dad's car, my dad is driving, my whole family is on the way to the Penang island. When I was small, we rarely go to the island. Our home is on the mainland Penang, and going to island always means one thing, road trip!
The TV was playing this song, when I was about to leave home to study in France. What a coincidence I thought. It is particularly meaningful to me, beacuse I am quite closed to my mom. She is like a friend to me.
- Stranger by Soler
One of the songs in my phone. This song always takes me back to old days when I was in a TGV from Toulouse to Valence, and the coastline of Montpellier flying pass me. I was reminding myself to appreciate this relationship.
It made me sad, and still make me sad.
Two of my friends and I were in the bus from Rome Ciampino airport to Rome Fiumicino airport. There was a 12-hour delay on our flight. In the end we were taken to the Fiumicino for departure because the "problem" in Ciampino airport couldn't be fixed and was closed down. When taking the transiting bus, it was a total chaos, since everybody's flight was delayed. Unluckily, my ex didn't manage to get into the same bus with us.
I was sitting in the bus with two of them behind me. I was so afraid of get lost of sight of her and worrying like hell, while this song was played in the bus. And I had never felt so worried about one person in my life.
- Dandelion's Promise by Jay Chou
It was the summer of 2010. My ex was trying to learn the piano version of the song. She said she was going to finish learning it by the time I came back from the Italy backpacking trip. I took the train to Milan to start my trip but I returned to Toulouse straight away, on that same day. I felt lost and realized I really miss her. In the return train, light-hearted was the feeling. I reached at midnight. When I opened the door, she was just there infront of the keyboard, learning the song.
- Fall for you by Secondhand Grenade
It reminds of London. During the trip to London, this song was the morning alarm of one of my friends. I remember I was really irritated by the alarm because my friend could continue sleeping with the alarm. I can't and I had to wake up and shut it down myself. At the end of the trip, everyone in the group remembered the song as the theme song of the trip.
- Pourquoi tu pleures? by Madame Kay
It reminds me of the brief one month period in Intec, Shah Alam.
- Trois ans et demi d'amour by Patrick Bruel
It reminds me of 3 months stay in Royan.
And last but not least, Coldplay's songs. I can't remember exactly which Coldplay's songs simply because I was not very familiar with Coldplay that time. It was played when me and my friends were in a car, going back to safety after two-day lost in the mountains. We all were exhausted but felt secured and lucky to be able to live through the odds.
I notice that smell can do the same too. Too bad I am not good enough in describing smells. But there is an author I know who can, Patrick Süskind, in his novel, "Perfume : The Story of a Murderer". I tried to read the french version once, but didn't finish. For me, he is really good in describing the smells but a bit too elaborated, in a sense that, too hard for me to digest all those details. There is a film adaptation in english also. The ending is simply WTF!!!
So, may be we should start conserving precious memories through other 4 senses, rather than photos or videos.
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