Vachon Imagined

The power of music is one of life’s quiet miracles. A photograph can remind us of where we have been, a scent can awaken a memory, but music does something different. It doesn’t simply remind us of a moment; it returns us to it. A few notes, a familiar voice, a melody carried through time, and suddenly the years collapse. The distance between who we were and who we are disappears.

Music is not merely something we hear. It is something we inhabit. It carries our first loves, our heartbreaks, our friendships, our victories, and our confusion. Long after the details have faded, a song can unlock a room in ourselves we forgot existed.

The power of music. The Smiths. Peter Gabriel. It doesn’t really matter the band or the tune. What matters is its power—the power within you—to carry you back to a time when you were not where you are now.

The present makes this possible. It grounds us in something majestic as we explore this great world. One moment I’m here, and the next I’m back in my girlfriend’s room, getting ready for dance class with The Smiths playing in the background. Then it’s “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel, and suddenly I’m sixteen again, waiting for her mother to make her famous chocolate chip cookies, which I’m fairly certain now contained crack cocaine for how addictive they were.

Music reminds me that I’m not much different than I was then. I’m still that sixteen-year-old girl, confused by the world, confused by people, trying to find my way. The difference is that back then the type of music didn’t matter. It wasn’t about genre, taste, or identity. It was simply about getting lost in it.

Music allowed me to step into another mind for a while, another way of seeing, another way of feeling. It showed me what it meant to be alive. What it meant to be human.

And, somehow, what it meant not to be.

For a few moments, the boundaries disappeared. There was no past and present, no self and other. There was only the song, carrying me somewhere I had forgotten I still lived.