Sometimes aural context is everything, or at least it’s a pretty good chunk.
Speaking of the power of musical association: When the weather turns no-jacket warm again, I always fall into a bit of windows down/car stereo music revery, in that “this has been the soundtrack of my life” kind of way. This past weekend has been a good climate for that. The music stores so much information in addition to what the composer/artist was trying to get across. Visual images come back in a flood, feelings, experiences. Music as personal culture. And though often as vague and changeable as a memory, it also has a strong root buried the notes. I like this storage method. No hard drive crash or deleted account will disappear with these pieces of my life. I used to wonder if we could each create amazingly nuanced autobiographies using a series of YouTube music videos, and then I came to understand why this wouldn’t really work. There’s an incredible amount of information contained in music that only we hear.
Surely you’ve seen the opposite effect on the Shining, right? Pure youtube gold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmkVWuP_sO0
I seem to recall that creating fictional trailers from existing movies was an assignment at a film school, maybe USC. If only there was some central resource where I could find that out for sure…
Molly adds: Indeed! There are actually ten videos with a creepy spin (plus the Shining horror-to-feel good flick reversal) at that Mashable link, but that Mary Poppins one just really took the prize I thought.
I love the idea of a personal culture, and it really sheds some light on a recent experience of mine: a song I’d originally written for a children’s musical (a setting of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown) was sung at the producer’s funeral. The song had become a favorite of his family, and they felt it would be perfect. And who was I to say no?
(You can listen to the song here.)
http://www.davidwolfsonmusic.net/Story%20Salad.html