[summer]

Do we ever want to distance ourselves from music we love not because we're getting tired of it, but because it's tied to a particular point in the past, and we're trying to cast off our past selves and any association with it?

[nicfit]

yes, I do when I'm kinda gloomy, but if it's music I like I always get back to it when I'm noot in the "wrong mood".
but thinking again, it's not much a matter of my "past self", more like thigns that happened in the past. I like me/my past self, I don't feel the need to cast my past off ha ha.

[pbradley]

I think issues such as identity construction and authenticity are too complex to be properly addressed with an answer to a question like that.

[afterthefact]

I was just talking to my mom about this the other day, because I was telling her about how I cannot stand the music that I used to like when I was 10 or 11, around 1995. It wasn't until recently that I made the connection that this was when my dad died, and even though I liked the music then, since it made me happy while I was normally down, now, that I am happy, music from that era brings back those down feelings.

[afterthefact]

I notice too that I don't want to listen to music much while I'm down. I used to think this wouldn't be the case, and I would always be looking for something good to listen to in these moods, and I could never find anything. It took a while for me to realize that silence and doing something creative, instead of trying to take in someone else's creativity, is the best remedy.

[The Earl Of Slander]

Yeah. There are certain records, that, like afterthefact, I very strongly associate with my father's death. The prime examples are probably Sgt. Pepper's and After The Goldrush, both of which I adore, but very much link in my mind to my father digging them out and handing me them, when I was 15 and first really exploring "good music". I'm not someone that really gets melodramatically upset about anything, so it's not like I can't listen to them any more. In fact, I often do. But when I put them on it's usually to really focus on them, more as a link to my father than as pieces of music. I'm sure there are happier examples of the same sort of thing, but they're not coming to mind right now.

[afterthefact]

I do the same thing, actually. The music around his death that I don't like has little to do with him, but more with that time period. They were stupid songs, and if I weren't 11 I wouldn't like them at all anyway ("Mary Moon", Del Amitri's "Roll On Me," and other crap from that time period). But it is clear to me that the reason I don't like to hear it is not simply because of it not being good music, but because of the time period it came from.

As far as music that I associate with my dad, like CCR for example, I do still listen to it it the way you mentioned EOS; I listen to it with more of intent to relate with my father more.



Jesus, where is Freud when you need him?

[The Earl Of Slander]

It's not really surprising to me. I mean, music is pretty one of most important things in my life, emotionally, and has been for some time. Probably the single most important thing. So it seems natural that I tie the music I love to my emotional state at that time, to a certain extent...