#musicandmemory

He didn’t write it for the radio. He didn’t write it for a crowd.

He wrote it for the Vigil.

For the uncomfortable chair pulled too close to the bed. For counting breaths without meaning to. For the quiet courage of not leaving.

The song is a power ballad, but not the loud kind. It swells slowly. It holds its ground. It refuses to rush the morning.

It’s about standing watch while the world narrows to a rise and a fall. Chest up. Chest down. Again. Again.

It is like you waiting at The Ghost Station.

A platform that exists outside of time. You’re not getting on the train. You know that. You were never meant to.

But someone you love is.

And the only thing that matters, the only right thing, is to stand beside them while it arrives.

You don’t pull them back. You don’t pretend it isn’t coming. You just stay.

You keep your eyes open. You don’t abandon the platform. You say, I’m here. I’m still here.

That’s what The Longest Night is about.

Not fighting death. Not conquering grief. Just devotion.

The kind that says: “If you have to go, you won’t go alone. I’ll walk you as far as I’m allowed.”

Some nights are longer than they should be. Some nights ask more of us than we thought we had.

This one does.

So Wells keeps the watch. He holds the line. He waits for the light, not because it’s coming soon, but because staying matters.

"This one if for you Gene, you will be missed once you board the train, but know that your family and friends are here waiting with you even though we can come with you, we are here with you until the train arrives"

Book Recommendation: Transported by Elizabeth Margulis

There's a moment near the end of La La Land where the music starts and the room seems to dissolve. Five years vanish in an instant, and Mia isn't remembering her past so much as living inside it again. If a song has ever done that to you, you already know the feeling is real. What you might not know is why.

Transported is cognitive musicologist Elizabeth Margulis's attempt to answer that properly, and her central claim is a bold one: music isn't simply something we listen to, it's a kind of technology the brain uses to travel. Where most memory triggers hand us facts to assemble (a face, a smell, a photograph), music delivers something closer to a replica of the moment itself, the cold of a particular night, the texture of how we felt, rebuilt rather than recalled.

WHY I LOVE THIS BOOK

What I love most is how precisely it explains a feeling most of us have had but never properly examined. Margulis introduces a concept she calls make-perceive: the state in which you're genuinely hearing a piece of music while simultaneously imagining a scene so vivid that the two become indistinguishable. She compares it to looking at the constellation Orion. The stars are real, the lines connecting them are not, yet those imagined lines change the entire picture. Music draws the lines. Your memory fills in the sky.

The book gets stranger, and better, from there. Margulis ran studies where strangers listened to the same piece and described what they pictured, with no conversation between them beforehand, and the results lined up again and again. Liszt's Faust Symphony brought cat-and-mouse cartoon chases to mind rather than the demonic drama the composer intended, and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries conjured pirates in a storm. We seem to share something like an inner cinema, tuned by the same cultural references, and music simply plays the reel.

The chapters on dementia are where the book earns its weight. Patients who can no longer recall names, faces, or where they are will still catch a wrong note in a song they knew decades earlier. Music, Margulis shows, often outlasts almost everything else in memory, and when it plays, something of the person returns with it. Briefly, but genuinely.

WHAT I DISLIKE

Nothing of substance. If anything, I'd have happily read another hundred pages on the chapter about childhood-seeded nostalgia alone, where Margulis suggests that some of the music we feel most attached to as adults was planted by our parents years before we ever chose it ourselves.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

Anyone who has ever been ambushed by a song in a supermarket, or felt a melody through a car window do something a photograph never quite manages, will find a satisfying explanation here. It's a thoughtful read for music lovers, but just as much for anyone curious about memory, imagination, or how the mind quietly rebuilds the past.

“These are the seasons of emotion…” — Led Zeppelin

After nearly 40 years in Los Angeles, I forgot what real seasons felt like. Moving to Washington State brought them back — along with memories of childhood, family, and a sense of wonder I didn’t realize I’d lost.

This essay weaves together music, family (including raising two daughters on the autism spectrum), and the quiet way our environment shapes how we see the world.

Finding Wonder Again in the Changing Weather

Some songs do not belong to one voice.

They belong to history. To memory. To the people who carried them forward.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is one of those songs.

In this performance, the voice of A. Cole rises with honesty, while the instrumental by Tyese holds the space beneath every word.

It is not loud. It is not rushed. It is careful.

And that is what makes it beautiful.

This song has always been more than melody. It is testimony. It is survival. It is hope learning how to sing.

And when voices and music meet with respect, the song remembers who it is.

You can watch the full performance here: 👉 https://youtu.be/0sGJ5dsEXZk

And for those who need a quiet, performance-ready instrumental version for ceremonies, churches, or reflection, it is available here: 👉 https://kissingsongs.com/lift-every-voice-and-sing-instrumental-track

Some songs are not just heard. They are carried.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” has always been more than a song.

It is a promise. A memory. A prayer that learned how to breathe.

And sometimes… not every voice can sing it anymore.

Some voices tremble. Some forget the words. Some remember only the feeling.

That is when the music must carry them.

An instrumental version does something quiet and kind. It lets the heart speak when the mouth cannot. It lets memory walk ahead of language.

I have learned that dignity does not disappear with age. It only changes its voice.

And when a piano plays this melody, it does not replace the voices. It waits for them.

It holds space for the ones who sang it before. And the ones still learning how to sing it again.

Music does not demand strength. It offers it.

Lift every voice… even the ones that can only whisper now.

— Tyese

There are songs you play all the way through. And there are songs that stay with you before they even end.

Instrumental music has a way of doing that.

It doesn’t tell you what to feel. It doesn’t explain itself. It simply gives you space.

Space to remember. Space to grieve. Space to smile. Space to breathe.

I’ve learned that silence and sound are not opposites. They are companions.

A soft piano can hold more truth than a thousand words. A single note can carry an entire lifetime.

For those who have lost pieces of memory, music often becomes the language that remains.

And for those who still remember everything, music reminds us to slow down and listen while we can.

Some songs are not meant to be finished.

They are meant to be felt.

— Tyese

Sometimes music doesn’t need lyrics.

A single piano note can open a door the mind forgot was still unlocked. A melody can reach a memory before a name ever returns.

For many seniors, especially those living with dementia or Alzheimer’s, music becomes a bridge. Not to the present — but to the self they once were, and still are.

I’ve watched eyes soften when a familiar instrumental begins. I’ve seen hands move gently in rhythm. I’ve seen quiet turn into recognition.

Music remembers us even when we struggle to remember ourselves.

That is why instrumental music matters. It doesn’t demand. It doesn’t rush. It simply arrives… and waits.

If you’ve ever watched a loved one reconnect through music, you know exactly what I mean.

And if you haven’t yet, one day you might.

Let music be gentle. Let memory be kind. Let moments still exist — even without words.

— Tyese