pet shop boys

i've talked about music-memory before. it's something that always amazes me: the way that my memories are strongly tied to music. in college, i'd listen to my favorite CDs while studying (never a new, unknown CD) and then during the test, I'd play back the music in my head. Along with the music would come recall of the material I'd studied. It worked very well.

Right now I'm listening to the Pet Shop Boys discography. It always brings back the same set of memories, in vivid non-verbal detail.

When I got this album, I was in high school. I'd put it in my player, put my headphones on, lie stomach down on my bed with my head and shins and arms hanging off the edges of the bed, and read from my copy of The Dragonlance Chronicles, which was laying on the floor.

Listening to the album now brings back memories of the various things that happened in the books (i.e. scenes of battle and images of the characters) and the sensation of lying on the bed reading the stuff.

Some of the songs evoke memories from further back. "It's a Sin" used to be a favorite of mine even before I'd known who sung it. I recall listening to this song in the bathroom with my little yellow handheld FM radio. I loved that thingy and took it everywhere. Once, when the song came on the radio, I sang along with it with the babysitter (uh, not in the bathroom this time).

Sometimes when I want to produce, enhance, or suppress a certain mood, I'll put on a particular piece and surrender to the memories.

Knowing how to manipulate ones own brain for fun and profit is a neat trick.