The Power of Objects

I’ve never really been superstitious like that, the way certain things have, to some people, some deeper meaning, kept in sacred regard. But lately, I’ve been coming across more and more items of no particular importance ­per se, which seem to hold some special power that link them to memory. It’s the simple, everyday things that get to me most. Take a CD, for instance. Nothing particularly exciting, just one of the many in collection. But the moment I see it, pick it up, so much as hold it… all the feeling and emotion from when I first listened to the music on it, or perhaps even just from the time of getting the CD, comes flooding back, for better or worse. What amazes me more, is that I can remember the little oddments of what happened then – more the notions of, than actual elements, and which granted, are fluid, fleeting, disjointed, but I remember them vividly nonetheless. It’s equally intriguing and frustrating, because what washes over me is not something I have been able to quantify, but still evokes nostalgia, and some tender, if elusive, bittersweet sentiment. I guess the CD being Come Away With Me doesn’t help. Perhaps we hold memory at such importance because it can sometimes be the only thing we have left.

Maybe this entry should be renamed The Power of Music. Or The Power of Memory.