They say that smell is the sense most tied to memory, and I tend not to argue with “they.” However, I have very specific memories associated with sounds that could hardly be stronger. More specifically, I’m talking about songs and what they conjure up in my crowded mind.
Whenever I hear Sloan’s song called “The N.S.” (which has the great rhyme of, “But if you think that it’s cold when you’re swimming in the ocean/It’s hard to believe you’re a Nova Scotian”), I automatically picture the road on UCSB’s campus that took me from my office parking lot to the freeway. It’s the first song on the cd and that was the first time I popped it in my car and gave it a listen, so that mental image stuck. Another song on that album always makes me picture the driveway of the house I lived in at the time (specifically me backing out of it). If anything from The Postal Service’s album “Give Up” starts playing, various visions of Sacramento and the surrounding area come up (depending on the song). “El Amor Despues Del Amor” by Argentine singer Fito Paez immediately gives me visions of me lying on my bed in my dorm room in early ’96, listening on a now-archaic Sony Discman. And when I hear the opening drums of “The Best of What’s Around” by Dave Matthews Band, I usually space out a bit because I’m remembering an entire evening of fun from a while back.
It was the summer of 1995, and my friends and I had just graduated high school. As a final large group activity, many members of our drama class went with our teacher to Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare Festival. We drove up in a caravan of four or five cars, toured the theaters, saw six plays that ranged from awesome to awesomely bizarre, met a concierge who totally deserves his own post, and generally had a hell of a time. One thing that Ashland didn’t seem to have was much of a nightlife…at least for 16-18 year-olds. We’d gone to Lithia Park on one of the earlier nights of the trip to hang out (since it was the only place we knew), but cops showed up not too long after to kick us out. A night or two later, fellow blogger MC Squared and I asked where we could go get a bite to eat. “At this time…I think the only thing open is Cafe 24,” said the hotel staffer. It was probably 10pm, and at home, we would’ve gone to Denny’s or somewhere like that to share appetizers and desserts, but that wasn’t an option in this town.
On the way to his car, we ran into a few other people from our group who decided to join us. We got to his sporty two-door Mazda and realized that we suddenly had a group of seven people. “It’s close by. We can fit,” he said, and so we all piled in. Three people (including me) crammed into the back seat with a fourth person on a couple of our laps at once. Two smaller females shared the front passenger seat, and once we were all in as best as we could manage, he started the car. Like that, song number one from DMB’s “Under the Table and Dreaming” album came on. First the drums, and then the words that caused all of us to instinctively sing along. Partway through the song, I had one of those rare in-the-moment times when I realized, “Hey, this is an iconic moment of this part of my life.” I think what did it for me was the line, “Turns out not where but who you’re with that really matters.” Though I had elbows and shoulders jabbing me from all angles, I knew this would be one of those times that I’d look back on fondly.
We got to Cafe 24 and un-gracefully spilled out of the car. In case the car ride with friends and timely music wasn’t enough for me to remember that night forever, we had a fantastic waiter who made it a certainty. He must have been stoned; there’s really no other explanation. In a slow and disinterested tone, he asked us what we’d like to order. He went around the table and then got to MC Squared, who was having trouble making up his mind. “I can’t decide between the hamburger and the french toast. I realize they’re very different, but those are the only two things that really caught my eye.” A lesser waiter (or maybe a sober one) would’ve paused to consider the differences between those two options and maybe even comment on them. Instead, our waiter said in a very serious tone, “I say you go with the burger. Because, when you think about it, french toast is really…just bread, man. The burger is so much more than that.” “Wow!” said MC Squared, “That was very convincing! You totally just swayed me. I’ll have the hamburger!”
I don’t remember anything about the rest of the meal or the ride back to the hotel. In fact, I can’t remember any other meals at all from the entire trip (unless you count the Arby’s we stopped at in Lodi on the long drive home). But every single time I hear the beginning of that song, I’m at least temporarily stuffed in the back seat of a black sports car, traveling in another state, en route to a philosophical lesson about the existential insignificance of french toast. Top that, smell.