The Challenge with Recreating Musical Experiences

Have you ever wished that you could hear a piece of music again for the first time, or that you could recapture a moment in listening when the piece affected you so entirely that you’ll never forget it? I’ve wanted that more times than I can count. To try and have that meaningful experience again, I've tried to exactly re-create old moments to relive or reawaken them, but I’ve come to learn that that approach has a fundamental flaw. The problem is that I’m trying to relive an expired moment. 

Moments are fleeting. Whenever we try to recreate old memories we have to abandon the current moment--the one we're experiencing right now--in search of something that’s already happened. But when we have transformational experiences with music, it's most often because we are in the moment. We are right there with the music, experiencing it through one of the feeling filters.

There are four main ways to practice active listening, and I call each of these ways filters. First, there are the feeling filters, the exploratory filter and the experiential filter. There are also two thinking filters, the critical filter and the analytical filter. A key difference between the feeling and thinking filters is that the feeling filters happen in the moment. The thinking filters, while just as vital, take you out of the moment.

These filters explain why it is so hard to exactly recreate meaningful musical experiences we had in the past. When we try to recreate them, we step out of the current moment into a thinking filter, instead of being truly immersed in the moment through one of the feeling filters.

What can we do instead? My recommendation is to try for a new experience with the same thing that sparked your old moment. In terms of the listening filters, this is best done via the exploratory filter. You may not be able to have the exact same experience you did the first time you listened to a piece of music, but you can step into the exploratory filter and see it in a beautiful new light. It’s always worth exploring what you know and know well–not necessarily analyzing, but exploring through feeling, because feelings are more renewing than fact. 

So, how do you treat old moments? Remember them, and cherish them, and let them lead you to new moments--new, beautiful music experiences.