2005-06-19 - 1:08 p.m.
What I'm listening to: Ahab the Arab by Ray Stevens.
Tube amp is warm, fresh mint tea steaming, shisha pipe bubbling and puffing. Life is good.
Lately I've been thinking about how much I remember through popular music. I think Susan Sontag, when talking about news photographs, mentioned that 'we remember through photographs', but I can't be quoted on that.
The memory of Stairway to Heaven that I mentioned in an earlier post had me searching through my mental archives for some of my first memories of being alive. Among these memories include hearing The Logical Song by Supertramp, Tom Sawyer by Rush, and an Indian film song from the late 1970s.
I have no images accompanying the Supertramp cut, but I do remember hearing it at a young age. I remember hearing Tom Sawyer for the first time when we went on a family camping trip with my mom's sister's family to Kennebunk Port and Old Orchard Beach, Maine. It was nightime, and I think my brother had just got his first walkman-the original red Sony walkman that cost $200 in 1981-82.
The indian film song I used to like hearing over and over again. I remember bouncing up and down on the back seat of the car, when I got my way, and my mother played the song for me over and over again. It was on the 401 on the way to Toronto. I remember seeing my father's balding head just peering above the back of the driver's seat. The top of his chrome dome was lit up by the cars that were behind us. We were doing a somewhat routine trip to see the cousins in Pickering, as well to hit what is now the original little India-Gerrard Street East.
We used to go there to eat, buy some groceries, movies and records. It's still a nostalgic pilgrimage site for us, even though new South Asian neighbourhoods have popped up all over GTA.
Anyway, sadly I didn't bring any Supertramp or Rush with me when I moved. Come to think of it both records were inherited from my brother. On the flip side is that I still have a sizeable stash of records at my parents' place that I listen to when I go to visit.
I'm beginning to draft a soundtrack to my early childood. It's not a series of images, but a series of sounds, that link to a grander narrative of popular culture. Western as well as Eastern pop culture. I remember through sounds.
