Songs and Memories

Posted on: Mon, 09/06/2010 - 01:08 By: dae
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On Sat, I attended TEDxKrungthep, an independent TED event organized by local TED enthusiasts and the final speaker is Bojo, a choir master. He led all audiences to sing Heal the World by Michael Jackson. The strange thing for me is that, years ago, this is one of songs that I had kept cassette (yes, there is a thing called tape cassette at that time) nearby all the time but somehow, I forgot to include it in my iPhone. It simply get lost in time.

Now, I am trying to remember my old song, and, stranger than before, it turns out that when I try to recall old song, I usually revive some fond memory in the past and there is a strong relation between the song and that memory even though the song and that memory has nothing to share except that it happen in relatively same time. For example, I think of a song "Yesterday once more" and suddenly the memory of me playing Dune II get revive. No, I didn't listen to "Yesterday once more" while I were playing Dune II but the first time I heard "Yesterday once more" is around the same time that I started playing Dune II.

My guess is that, as time goes by, memory loses its fidelity. Only strong emotion event are remembered and then it is compressed by "Packing" with other memory in nearby period, thus there is a link between a song and a game.

It seems like my brain is doing house keeping of its database.