Memory at Work

An analysis of nostalgia in music through digital technology

Bob Balm & Puck van Sprang

Digital Music Cultures MA Nieuwe Media en Digitale Cultuur Authors: Bob Balm and Puck van Sprang Student ID: 3218546 and 3253252 Teacher: Isabella van Elferen Institution: Universiteit Utrecht January 2011

Table of Contents
Introduction (Bob & Puck) 1. Nostalgia (Bob & Puck) 2. Musical Treasures (Puck) 3. Victims of Memory (Bob) 4. Technogical Nostalgia (Bob & Puck) References Musical References 2 4 9 17 25 30 34

Introduction
The question of what music is and what it does to its listeners is a very broad one, and a question that has so far been, and will perhaps forever, remain without a definitive answer. One strand of sub-questions we may ask when researching musics place in the world has to do with its relation to peoples memories. We all have that one special song that takes us back to when we were young and in school, when we met that special someone with whom we shared a summer, or when we hung out with friends at the local mall. Whenever such a song is played on the radio we are instantly reminded of exactly how it was in those days. We recall the people we were with, the environment we are in, perhaps even minor details such as a particular smell or sound. Such impulses are generally known to evoke a feeling of nostalgia (Bull 2009: 86). The central theme of this essay will be exactly that: nostalgia in music. We want to place the emphasis on the way nostalgia emerges through listening to music.

Michael Bull, in The Auditory Nostalgia of iPod Culture (2009), gives a description of how iPod users experience nostalgia through the devices typical features such as playlists and the shuffle function. In his analysis however, he remains rather superficial in dealing with the concept of nostalgia itself. Our aim in this essay will be to delve deeper into this concept. We will do so by examining a division that has arisen when considering nostalgia. This division splits the concept into voluntarily conjured up nostalgia, or voluntary memory on the one hand, and involuntarily evoked nostalgia, or involuntary memory, on the other. This division is embodied in this essay by two works. First, Taking Your Favourite Sound Along: Portable Audio Technologies for Mobile Music Listening (2009) by Heike Weber in which she introduces sound souvenirs as a metaphor for voluntary auditory memories. Second, in The Musical Madeleine: Communication, Performance, and Identity in Musical Ringtones (2010), Imar de Vries and Isabella van Elferen similarly use the madeleine, a type of French cookie, metaphorically to explain how mmoires involontaires involuntary (auditory) memories are evoked through musical ringtones on mobile phones. While ringtones themselves have little relation to this article, the metaphor of the musical madeleine will prove to be useful in defining nostalgia more specifically.

In Chapters two and three of this essay, which deal with these two areas of musical nostalgia, two philosophical approaches will be used to analyze the process of creating and recalling memories. The second chapter will be devoted to Jacques Derridas view on archives and will attempt to match it with the concept of voluntary nostalgia and (portable) music devices. In the third chapter, a similar analysis is given of involuntary nostalgia using the ideas of Gilles Deleuze surrounding memory and time. It must be stressed that we are not trying to combine Derrida and Deleuze in order to make a single statement. Rather, the philosophers offer valuable complements to the suggested sides of nostalgia we discussed earlier. Finally, in chapter four, we will examine how nostalgia unfolds in an age of digital music technologies. The core work of this last chapter is the idea of tertiary memory, by Bernard Stiegler.

1. Nostalgia
In The Auditory Nostalgia of iPod Culture Michael Bull uses the concept nostalgia to describe memories, meaning and other connotations related to music, using the iPod as an example. According to Bull, for the first time in history it is possible - because of technological improvements - for listeners to create their own private mobile auditory world wherever they go (Bull 2009: 83). Portable music devices such as the iPod are symbolic of a culture in which many increasingly use communication technologies to control and manage their daily experience (Bull 2009: 83). Bull describes the experience of this culture from the perspective of the iPod users:
[They] often report being in a dream reveries while on the move turned inward from the world and living in an interiorized an pleasurable world of their own making, away from the historical contingency of the world, and into the certainty of their own past, real or imagined, enclosed safely within their own private auditory soundscape. Nostalgia bathes these experiences in a warm, personalised glow (2009: 83).

Bull claims that the value of individualized forms becomes the opposite of culturally fabricated forms of auditory nostalgia. We should not look at interrelations between personal and collective memories of popular music as Jos van Dijck states in Audio, Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices, instead the iPod users are prone to listen more individually rather than utilizing collective music devices such as radio (Bull 2009: 84). By saying this he does not mean that we should not take culture into account, but that the practice of listening is a moment in which iPod users seek out an individualized moment of consumption. These individualized practices he describes as forming a personal soundtrack to daily activities. Some of the examples Bull mentions are people listening to personal audio devices while shopping, being on public transport or working out in the gym. In doing so, these listeners create their own soundscape, a sort of auditory bubble (Bull 2009: 84-85). This allows them to be more connected with their personal memories evoked by the music.

Nostalgia is Bulls central subject in speaking of contemporary urban experience. It helps to locate the subject in the world, it gives a semblance of coherence, and it warms up the space of movement in a mobile world in which users increasingly deflect away from the space and time traversed (2009: 85). He recognizes a shift of the collectivized auditory nostalgia of the

twentieth-century Western Society to a more recent individualized form: The segmented nature of contemporary [] nostalgic [musical] reception is superseded in the present account by the individualized scheduling of music in the most recent of mobile auditory technologies, the iPod (Bull 2009: 86). In our view, Bulls work on auditory nostalgia archived in and evoked by the iPod remains rather superficial. The aim of this essay then is to explore deeper some of the concepts that Bull addresses, sometimes unknowingly, in his article. To do so, we will look at two ways in which auditory nostalgia appears in music theory. First, there is the area of voluntary auditory memory. This term governs those memories that one is explicitly aware of and willingly accesses through the listening of a certain (collection of) music. An example of this is Jerome, one of the respondents to Bulls inquiry. Jerome explains how he purposefully listens to certain music when he is in a particular mood, for example feeling homesick to Switzerland, his nation of birth (Bull 2009: 88). The second area is that of involuntary auditory memory. This kind of memory is not purposefully accessed, but is accidentally recalled through a certain event, such as a song being played on the radio or a playlist on shuffle, and takes the listener back to a specific period in his or her life. This type of memory is shown in Bulls description of nostalgia experienced by Swiss soldiers stationed in France. Upon hearing sounds such as a village bell ringing or shepherds driving their herds, the soldiers were reminded of their home in the Swiss Alps.

It should be noted that these two areas are more or less two sides of the same coin, as we believe the mnemonic mechanisms the way in which the actual process of recollection can be theoretically conceptualized that drive them both are similar if not blatantly identical. In this essay we will nonetheless deal with these two areas separately. The area of voluntary auditory memory, will be mostly supported by theories around the construction and experience of archives, such as work of Derrida. The other path, that of involuntary auditory memory, is made up of works surrounding the actual and virtual, which are two connected concepts worked out by Deleuze that deal with the perception of time and can be applied to memory and nostalgia.

We can label these two different areas using two concepts that demonstrate somewhat metaphorically what the two areas are about. First, labelled onto voluntary auditory memory is the idea of sound souvenirs, coined by composer Raymond Murray (1977) as a term to 5

describe the way recording technologies are capable of rescuing endangered sounds, such as the sounds of pre-industrial life (Bijsterveld & Van Dijck 2009: 12) and is further explained by Heike Weber (2009). Weber states that portable audio devices can be interpreted as mobile sound souvenirs, they help to configure and shape peoples cultural identities when they travel elsewhere [and enable] users to channel their emotions (2009: 70). But, although it might sound easy, there is not just one way of approaching these souvenirs; there are four different modes of using sound souvenirs emerge: the rewind and forward modes, and the modes that fostered group and individual identities (Weber 2009: 70).
By listening to mobile sound souvenirs, any given spot can be domesticated through a selfselected sound track. Users thus have partially regained control over the spaces they cross, either by making the unknown territory known through familiar songs, or by turning routine activities and commuting into exiting, potentially unique experiences through an accompanying selection of music. In the first practice, users create similarity between the new territory and home by taking sound souvenirs from a familiar to an unfamiliar situation. They go back in time to be able to cope with the present the rewind mode of using sound souvenirs. The second practice, however, can be called the forward mode of taking sound souvenirs along. By making the routine unique or the familiar unfamiliar with the help of a self-created sound track, this practice generates future sound souvenirs (Weber 2009: 80).

By giving an historical introduction of portable music devices, Weber stresses the importance of technologies in our musical experience. Portable electronics have [] become intertwined with both the increased spatial mobility and growing individualization of society. They have helped to foster and maintain a sense of emotional and cultural identity, which appears to have drifted from a group to a more individual basis (Weber 2009: 80-81). Though, whether used in rewind or forward mode, and whether as group or individual identity, all these sound souvenirs or mediated memories as Jos van Dijck would call them (2004) are voluntarily retrieved by people turning on a (portable) music device.

The second label, placed onto involuntary auditory memory, is that of the musical madeleine. A madeleine is a type of cookie that Marcel Proust (1913-1927) dipped in his tea, the taste of which made him remember his grandmother. A musical madeleine then, is a sudden feeling that disrupts the current everyday situation, triggered through music. This is described in the article The Musical Madeleine: Communication, Performance, and Identity 6

in Musical Ringtones (2010) by Imar de Vries and Isabella van Elferen. [They] consider musical cell-phone ringtones as virtual, communicative and cultural performances [and] argue that the musical ringtone functions as a musical madeleine [] an involuntary mnemonic trigger of a complex web of individual and collective memories (De Vries & Van Elferen 2010: 61). Just like Weber they start with a technological introduction with the emphasis on mobility. Mobilization has a significant influence on how people experience connections they share with other social beings. By studying the ringtone as a virtual communicative and cultural performance De Vries and Van Elferen state that the ringtone is often an overlooked element of mobile telephony and plays an important role in its uses as symbol of economic, social and cultural society (2010: 62). They describe the ringtone as:
...virtual because it is always silently present and potentially activated; it is a communicative performance because it works as a sign projected by the callee and interpreted by an audience; it is a cultural performance because it employs the performative faculty of this communicative act in order to stage cultural meanings for its potential audience (De Vries & Van Elferen 2010: 62).

The goal of their article then, by approaching the ringtone from these different angles, is to conceptualize the ringtone and its cultural work as a way in which possible meanings are generated (2010: 62). This constant silent presence and potential of the ringtone (and thus its related connotations) will prove to be important later on, when discussing how memories can suddenly present themselves in our actual lives. When De Vries and Van Elferen consider musical ringtones as cultural performances on the one hand and as musical communications on the other, it follows that what is being performed are the cultural meanings of the music being played (2010: 66). Meaning is attached to a ringtone and enables users to display a certain message and influence the audience; the latter will hear the ringtone and possibly recall a related memory. In any case, the hearing of the ringtone itself will become a memory to be recalled at a later time, when the same song is heard again. From this follows that music is constantly re-contextualised. Original connotations can be changed or adjusted. De Vries and Van Elferen consider the ringtone as the involuntary memory of a song: [T]his seemingly minute medium inevitable stirs strong memories to which new contexts make additions rather than radical alterations (2010: 68). This feeling, an unannounced memory without the motivated choice of a person to recall it, can then be characterized as a musical madeleine.

Having introduced and explained the motivation behind the structure of this essay, we move on to the next chapter, in which we will discuss voluntary memories, mainly by approaching it from Jacques Derridas post-structuralist point of view by analysing portable music devices as archives. In his book Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression, he states that human beings have the immanent impulse to save and maintain everything, because we are afraid to lose memories of knowledge. An archive is not a fixed given and is constantly a subject of change. These ideas will form the basis of our discussion of voluntary memory.

2. Musical Treasures
The first time I heard The Highways of my Life (Isley Brothers 1974) it was on the radio just after my first grandfather passed away. Although having a tremendous dislike for ballads in general at that time, I was very touched by it. A few years later, my other grandfather passed away and I started playing the song over and over again. On the one hand it recalled my grief of the time I lost my first grandfather, but on the other hand it gave me comfort while grieving about my grandfather now passed away. This weird feeling of melancholy and comfort is what I still experience while listening to this song, but growing up and beginning to understand the lyrics resulted in yet another connotation.

Moving down the highways of my life Makin' sure I stay to the right Moving down the highways of my life So I shan't be concerned With the other side of the road

Reading all the signs along the way Knowing where I am not what they say My destination's closer day by day So I can't concern With the other side of the road

[]

Leaving all the sorrows and the pain There's no love between us that remains Although you are the one You're not the same So the other side of the road

Can only take me back home

The song is about a person describing his life as a journey on a highway, on which he makes sure not to go to the other side of the road. The meaning of the song is ambiguous. On the one hand it is positive: moving on, coming closer to a certain goal, while staying on the right path in your life. On the other hand, we dont know what our destination is, we dont even know if we are going forward or backward. The only way to know this is by sometimes making mistakes: So the other side of the road, can only take me back home. Now, four and a half years later, to me this song is no longer just about grief; its also about life and how to live it. First I did not want to hear it when I was in a good mood, because it immediately brought me back to these sad memories about my grandfathers. A few years later I have grown more comfortable listening to this song. It has become part of my life and I will play it whenever I feel like listening to it. Such feelings are what this chapter will be about: the voluntary act of conjuring up memories or moods through playing specific songs, the influence of the first moment of hearing a song, and the way the accumulation of different events can change personal meaning of a song. The emergence of digital music, the numerous ways to spread it, and the developed devices to carry this music along all contribute to a more personalized and individualized way of listening to music. This expansion allows individuals more than ever before to play a song that has a certain connotation with a specific memory at will, when- or wherever they are. Focussing on the iPod as mobile music device, Bull states that in contemporary culture, the technology of the iPod provides an auditory mnemonic for contemporary nostalgic (2009: 86). In this chapter, by analysing mobile music devices as archives, the emphasis will be on voluntary memories as form of nostalgia. We will start by looking at the definition of archives as posited by Derrida in Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression (1995). Although his book is rather dated given the widespread emergence of digital music devices had yet to arrive in the 90s and not specifically related to music, his definition is still useful when considering contemporary music devices approached as archives. From a post-structuralist and historical (1989) point of view, Derrida states that we will have to start examining the word archive in order to understand why human beings collect and save things in the first place. Archive is derived from the Greek word Arkh which has two meanings. First, it means beginning there where things commence [a] physical, historical, or ontological principle (Derrida 1995: 1). Second, it means command there where

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authority [and] social order are exercised [a] nomological1 principle (1995: 1). Archive as concept, shelters in its name the memory of the word Arkh, but the archive shelters itself as well: which comes down to saying that it forgets is own meaning. An archive refers to itself in terms of the physical, historical or ontological but at the same time cannot catch its own meaning (1995: 2). In nomological sense, archive refers also to Arkh as command or order. Arkh and thus archive is derived from the Greek Arkheion meaning house or residence. Citizens that owned an Arkheion, were considered to possess political power and influence on law. They had the power to interpret the Arkheion and therefore the power to construct the law. This archontic power gathers functions such as unification, identification and classification (Derrida 1995: 2-3). In terms of digital music devices, users employ their contemporary MP3 player as such an Arkheion; they possess this device and have the power to fill it with any kind of music (or documents, movies and photos). According to Bull:
Sound is a powerful aphrodisiac when it comes to evoking memory. Memories are largely mediated memories in iPod culture, a mediated life through which to filter ones personal narrative. This coupling of the personal to the commodity is a hallmark of iPod culture with users in potentially constant touch with their narrative past. Musical past also becomes reconfigured and rediscovered in iPod culture. Musical identity is inscribed onto a portable memory bank giving the user instant access to its contents (Bull 2009: 89).

In Remembering Songs through Telling Stories, Jos van Dijck Media and Culture teacher at the University of Amsterdam uses the Top 2000 of Radio 2 (an annually created and played hit list on a Dutch radio station) as example to stress the importance of stories by remembering songs. Through comments on the website of the Top 2000, we can learn about how people are emotionally attached and what kind of meaning they ascribe to a song (2009: 109). But connotations change. Memories have the tendency to be altered every time we recollect them (2009: 107); or in Van Dijcks words:
[I]t is improbable that repeated listening over a life time would leave an original emotion (if there was such a thing) intact. Instead, the original listening experience may be substituted by a fixed pattern of associations, a pattern that is likely to become more brightly and intensely colored over the years. A memory changes each time it is recalled, and its content is determined more by the present than by the past. As much as people believe their original experiences remain intact, cognitive research confirms that musical remembrance alters with
1

The science of law making.

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age (Van Dijck 2009: 109).

In a similar vein of thought, Jacques Derrida argues that an archived memory is never the same as the original experience of the event the memory refers to (Derrida 1995: 11). The technology behind any archive allows for, indeed largely determines a particular type of construction of these mediated memories (Derrida 1994, Derrida 1995: 16-17). Thus it can be said that the manner in which individuals retrieve memory from songs on their iPod is largely determined by the technological properties of the iPod. Bull demonstrates as much in speaking of the playlists his respondents use to organize their music. Playlists are something typical of contemporary MP3 players and thus influence how the archival memories behind the songs in these playlists are experienced. Derrida claims that an archive such as a musical collection in the case of an iPod will never be finished but continuously adjusted, changed or replaced:
The question of the archive is not [] a question of the past. It is not the question of a concept dealing with the past that might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to know what that will have meant, we will only know in times to come. Perhaps (Derrida 1995: 36).

This characteristic of perpetual change of the archive can be traced in the use of MP3 players. Playlists are constantly changing: users delete songs, download new ones and rearrange the order in which songs are played. Bull gives the example that some people see their iPod as the diary or soundtrack of their life; an iPod as personalised archive (2009: 86). Nostalgia cannot be approached separately from its mechanical reproduction in contemporary music culture. This important aspect of the technology behind recorded music is often overlooked, yet it plays an intrinsic part in the act of recollection. There are people prefer the cracking sound of LPs above the clean CD versions released later on (Christiansen 2010). This shows that the characteristic of the recording and/or equipment defines the experience of the moment they heard the song for the first time (Van Dijck 2009: 112). Just like they treasure their amateur recordings, not in spite of, but because of their obvious technical shortcomings (2009: 112). Our personal memories evolve trough the interaction with recent as well as more traditional technologies. Every new medium makes the older ones authentic
meaning that each time a new audio technology emerges on the scene, the older ones become treasured as the authentic means of reproduction or as part of the original

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listening experience. In the digital era, scratches, ticks, or noise can be removed from tapes to make old recordings sound pristine, but they can also be added to make a pristine recording sound old. [] With the new digital technologies, sonic experiences of the past can be preserved and reconstructed in the future (2009: 113).

These new digital technologies undeniably have an influence on the process of remembering through recorded music. True collectors both have physical records as well as digital updates to be sure not to lose any of their music (Van Dijck 2009: 114). This anxiety to lose something is inherent to human beings. There would be no archive desire without forgetfulness. The necessity not to forget anything, and therefore the tendency to archive as much as possible is what Derrida calls archive fever (1995: 19). Materiality and technology are often integral to this memory urge and are unlikely to change with the arrival of digital equipment. As long as listening to music remains a mediated experience, memory will be enabled and constructed through its material constituents (Van Dijck 2009: 114). This is what Van Dijck calls mediated memories: these memories involve individuals carving out their place in history, defining personal remembrance in the face of larger cultural frameworks (2004: 275). Van Dijcks work is usually concerned with the study of interrelations between personal and collective memories, but we are particularly interested in the way she describes how memories be it collective or individual are constructed by the use of different media. New digital technologies allow music fans to customize their favourite collections of songs and use them as a symbolic resource in the construction of identity and community (2009: 116). Owners of contemporary MP3 players use their device as a vehicle for individual listening and storage of favourite songs, which according to Van Dijck leads to a situation in which MP3 players figure as agents in the conscious process of building up a (collective) memory. Although Van Dijcks goal is to explain that the storing of music is a shared or communal activity (2009: 118), technological developments tend to suggest the opposite direction: a more individualistic way of memorizing by creating personal music archives on MP3 players. Unlike van Dijck, Heike Weber (already introduced in the previous chapter), sees a shift in the development of audio technologies in which the personal aspect of music listening becomes increasingly important because of a new design feature of music devices, namely portability. Both authors use Tia DeNoras (2000) perspective on how music changes the way we experience time. These musical experiences are what DeNora calls music as a 13

technology of the self. Her goal is to ground the various ethnographic studies within a theoretical/multi-disciplined aggregate of contemporary thought (Magdanz 2002). Remarkable is the different perspectives from which both Van Dijck and Weber approach DeNoras book. In order not to stray away too much of the topic voluntary musical memories, the distinction between individual and collective memories will from now on only be discussed superficially. Weber uses both Bulls and DeNoras ideas to argue that users of audio technologies employ recorded music to create and maintain emotion, to elicit memories and to activate and relax themselves (2009: 69). The importance of the mobility of new media technologies is that it reshapes traditional ways of listening to music and normalizes new forms of mobile listening practices. Initially introduced as travel companion, mobile music devices became popular in all kinds of public spaces. Users have played an important role in shaping the meaning of these mobile technologies (Weber 2009: 69-70). Approaching these devices from a historical perspective starting with portable radios and traces the development of portable audio devices up to the Walkman Weber interprets them as mobile sound souvenirs that help to configure and shape peoples cultural identities when they travel elsewhere (2009: 70). These devices allowed users to channel their emotions and create a personally controlled auditory sphere (2009: 70). According to Weber, portable music devices became intertwined with the increase of spatial mobility and the growing individualization of society (2009: 80). Her core argument is that the activity of listening to music becomes increasingly individualized. Although writing about portability, she does not give much attention to the way new geographical locations influence the construction and evocation of memory in combination with music. Hearing a song on a specific location has always had an influence on the way memories were constructed, but portable devices geographically caused an enormous growth of options for when and where to listen to individually chosen music. Where personal music used to be listened to in personal, often domestic locations, and public music was listened to in public spaces, technological developments made it possible to expand the musical soundscape of personal music into public locations. We are reminded here of work by Michel de Certeau. In Walking in the City (1984), De Certeau describes how such practices like walking, wandering or window shopping are
the [activities] of passers-by, [as] transformed into points that draw a totalizing and reversible line on the map. They allow us to grasp only a relic set in the nowhen of a surface of

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projection. Itself visible, it has the effect of making invisible the operation that made it possible. These fixations constitute procedures for forgetting. The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten (De Certeau 1984: 131).

Although not literally speaking of walking through a city with mobile music devices, De Certeau provides some useful insights in the way the city can be shaped as a soundscape by personal connotation. By looking at how digital music devices now shape the way we look at geographical places from his technical semiotic perspective, we would like to stress the importance of the portability of music devices in creating new types of auditory memory. This portable character of contemporary MP3 players caused a change in the perception of the environment of its users. Walking through a city or in terms of De Certeau, walking in a city as immersive experience gains an extra dimension when combined with listening to music. This geographical expansion of music makes new locations a potential memory object to be evoked the next time the song is being played. Consider for example the testimony of Jerome in Michael Bulls article, as discussed in the previous chapter. Jerome used his iPod to remind him of home while being on the move. This example is a clearly voluntary memory; Jerome can choose whether to play this personal music or not. But what about the case of the Swiss soldiers stationed in France? With them, bells that sounded like Alpine melodies of Switzerland triggered a nostalgic memory. They never asked for this feeling, and yet it was triggered; it was involuntary. But before introducing the involuntary side of nostalgia, let us briefly summarize the characteristics of voluntary nostalgia. Memories and moods are constructed, adjusted and evoked by listening to music. By approaching mobile music devices as archives in terms of Derrida, contemporary MP3 players have become personal archives that can be used by individuals to voluntarily evoke specific memories. They can fill their MP3 players with anything they want, and can change the content anytime they want. Archives constantly change and are never finished, just like the playlist of an MP3 is never complete. The connotation of memories changes every time a song is played again because the occasion is never exactly the same as the first time. We have also seen that materiality and technology have a big influence on how these memories are retrieved. The sound quality of the specific device will in large part determine how a song is experienced for the first time. People often have physical as well as digital copies of their songs, to make sure that they will not lose these musical memories. The urge that drives such

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collecting behavior is what Derrida calls Archive Fever. Granting their users the ability to listen to music anywhere in the world, mobile music devices have caused an expansion of geographical memories. They influence the way music is perceived: they are personal archives; backups and help users construct their identity. As we have stated before, voluntary and involuntary auditory memories are closely related to each other. In this chapter, by approaching musical memories through contemporary MP3 players as personal archives of memory, we spoke about voluntary memories. In the next chapter, the focus will be on a sudden, unexpected confrontation with memories. What effect does this have on the feelings of individuals? What if a song reminds you of a relation that did not end so well? Or maybe an almost forgotten memory pops into your head because of a musical tune? The evocation of these involuntary memories will be examined from the point of view of Gilles Deleuze, and the emphasis will lie on how the act of remembering takes place.

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3. Victims of Memory
In 2001, the Finnish power-metal band Sonata Arctica released their sophomore record Silence. While this bands repertoire has no more meaning to me other than being generally ok to listen to, the eleventh track on this album, Tallulah, has come to carry a great deal of significance for me. I first heard it outside a local bar, almost four years ago, on a rainy Sunday morning at around 6 oclock. It was played to me on a cell phone by the girl I had just spent the night with dancing and having a great time. We ended up kissing and this would be the first day of our relationship. The lyrics tell a tale:
Remember when we used to look how sun sets far away? And how you said: "This is never over" I believed your every word and I guess you did too But now you're saying : "Hey, let's think this over" []

Tallulah, It's easier to live alone than fear the time it's over, oo-ooh... Tallulah, find the words and talk to me, oh, Tallulah, This could be... heaven []

I see you walking hand in hand with long-haired drummer of the band In love with her or so it seems, he's dancing with my beauty queen Dont even dare to say you hi, still swallowing the goodbye But I know the feelings still alive, still alive

Like so many relationships, this one too ended, and like so many songs, this one too tells exactly how I felt at the time of our breakup, down to the mention of a new love for her and awkward meetings afterwards. As this song carried such a connection to the time I spent with this girl, I have found it an eerie combination of beautiful and saddening to listen to ever since, and tend to stray away from it. Two years ago however, I was at a concert of this band, and the song happened to be in their set list. As the first notes of the piano struck my ears, I was immediately reminded of all kinds of things surrounding my relationship with 17

this girl. This musical occurrence of involuntary memory and the processes that shape it are what this chapter is all about.

The above description is not all that different from the example of Proust and the madeleine from De Vries and Van Elferens work (2010) mentioned in the first chapter. In speaking of involuntary memory evoked through music, it is interesting to look for a moment at work by Tia DeNora, an author who writes in a similar fashion to Michael Bull, whose article we mentioned in the introduction. In Music and Self-Identity (2006), DeNora describes how she, like Bull, interviewed respondents on their experience with memory and music. One of her respondents quite clearly describes the idea behind involuntary memory, when she tells of an experience she had when shopping. The song A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procul Harum, 1967) was played on the store radio and it reminded her of her time in university where she spent time with her future husband. The respondent claimed it takes [her] back (DeNora 2006: 141). DeNora starts her article with the assertion that [m]usic can be used as a device for the reflexive process of remembering/constructing who one is (2006: 141). Upon hearing again the music that was present at the time an experience was turned into a memory, most of the respondents described how they relived the experience. It is noteworthy how DeNora mentions remembering together with constructing. As we shall see, the two are very closely related when it comes to the manner in which memory is experienced. DeNora, in her analysis, recognizes that there is far more to the combination of music and memory than just acknowledging that music is often simply present at the occurrence of a memorable event (2006: 143-144). She goes on to find whatever it is that is more by asking people what they think it is in certain songs, like particular chords that are used, that makes these songs so memorable. In other words, DeNora tries to find the answer in music. In this chapter, we take another route by looking at one interpretation of how mnemonic retrieval might work on part of the listener. We do this by taking an in-depth look at work of Gilles Deleuze on memory. In the chapter Memory as Virtual Coexistence in his book Bergsonism (1988), Deleuze gives his own thoughts on work by Henri Bergson, who has written about memory in the late 19th century. Deleuze, in commenting on Bergson, paraphrases the latter in distinguishing two ways in which memory takes shape. First, there is the distinct presence of the past in the present, like an ever growing moment in time that contains not only that moment itself but also 18

everything that has come before. Second, there is a reference to the past as being behind the present in terms of locus, not time and not so much contained within the present but acting as baggage to the individual, dragged along as an external load (Deleuze 1988: 51). Deleuze explains this further, saying that on one hand, any next moment always contains within it the remnants left by the current moment. He calls this recollection-memory. On the other, these two moments are always connected to each other, since the current has not disappeared when the next arrives. This he names contraction-memory (1988: 51-52). While this seems highly micro-oriented, operating on the level of moments, in all their brevity, we can translate it to a bigger picture of musical memory. If we imagine the moment of hearing a song that reminds us of a period in our past, this moment is in the present, but is also the past in the present, actualizing in the moment all the connotations we have to the past, labelling this moment in the now with those connotations. At the same time this moment acts as a referent to the event in the past that the music reminds us of. It should be noted here that it is not the music that is being actualized (as can be said for instance when we see a band perform a previously recorded song), but the memory. Reminiscent of DeNoras description, the music can be seen as the device, the catalyst of this recollection. Thus, for the duration of the song we can say that we find ourselves in a movement [] by which the present that endures divides at each instant into two directions, one oriented and dilated towards the past, the other contracted, contracting towards the future (1988: 52). In examining how one involuntarily remembers a certain event in ones life through music, it is interesting to establish a certain process by which memory is accessed. Deleuze gives us just such a thing. This is a clearly philosophical process, that is not so much (related to) an organic one, although there are some similarities (for one, Deleuze mentions the brain, seemingly as a physical organ, in his explanation). According to Deleuze, the process of a memory being recalled consists of five steps of subjectivity. He has called these steps as follows (1988: 52-53). The first is named need-subjectivity, or the moment of negation. This is essentially the moment in which something about an object (in our case the music, for example a particular song) draws the attention of the subject (the listener). The second step is brain-subjectivity, or the moment of interval or of indetermination. This step is related quite closely to the physical organ to which its name refers, in that it is the step where the brain offers several possible actions that the subject might take in response to the occurrence of the object. The third step is affection-subjectivity, or the moment of pain. There is a certain uncertainty on the part of the authors here. Deleuze explains affection as the price paid by

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the brain or by conscious perception (1988: 53). However, our interpretation of the step in the entire process also encompasses other feelings, such as pleasure or grief. In our view then, this step acts as the moment of recognition, a certain aha-erlebnis where there is a sense of familiarity with the object, although it is not necessarily fully defined precisely what is familiar. The fourth step is recollection-subjectivity, which can be explained as the moment where the connection to (a) memory that the object induces is discovered by the subject. In other words, this is the step where the listener suddenly remembers that one summer night, that time spent in high school as a kid, or their first kiss. Finally, the fifth step is contractionsubjectivity. This final step completes the experience of the memory, in that the memory is experienced in its fullest sense. Deleuze describes it as bringing about a contraction of the experienced excitations from which quality is born (1988: 53). He goes on to divide these five steps into two categories, namely matter and memory. The first two steps, need-subjectivity and brain-subjectivity, pertain to the object (matter). In our case of studying musical memory, this means that need-subjectivity and brain-subjectivity are instigated by the music, then proceed to trigger something within the listener. The last two steps, recollection-subjectivity and contraction-subjectivity, are triggered within the subject (the memory of) the listener itself. The third step, affection-subjectivity, is the connection between the two areas, described by Deleuze as not yet the presence of a pure subjectivity that would be opposed to pure objectivity, [but] rather the impurity that disturbs the latter (1988: 53). In other words, the step of the aha-erlebnis is instigated by neither the music nor the listener, but rather takes place somewhere between. As the attentive reader will have noticed, the above suggests a subject/object dichotomy. In looking for an answer to the question what is music?, such a dichotomy has long been abandoned. That is to say, looking at music as the object and the listener as subject is a rather old fashioned and simple method. It should be noted though, that the dichotomy in the description above is originally made with reference to memory, not music. Hence we feel we must add that when speaking of the object of music, we do so fully aware of the awkwardness of such a definition, yet find it applicable in this particular study of mnemonic activity. One question that were prone to ask when dealing with memory, is where is it stored? Where in the subject can we find these memories that are triggered into experience whenever we hear a song that takes us back to them? It is tempting here to think of the mind of the listener as a kind of reservoir or library of memories, and of music as a trigger, like a 20

librarian taking out a certain book or a selective bucket taking a specific water sample of the reservoir. However, Deleuze argues that thinking of memories being contained in such a place, like the brain for example, is absurd. Rather, he states that recollection [] is preserved in itself (1988: 54, emphasis in original). This is a somewhat complex notion that requires elaboration. Deleuze does so by first acknowledging that there is a difference between past and present. The obvious way to think of this would be that the present is now and the past is gone. However, Deleuze more or less turns this conception around. He states:
We have great difficulty in understanding a survival of the past in itself because we believe that the past is no longer, that it has ceased to be. [] Nevertheless, the present is not [] but it acts. Its proper element is not being but the active or the useful. The past, on the other hand, has ceased to act or be useful. But it has not ceased to be. [] At the limit, the ordinary determinations are reversed: of the present, we must say at every instant that it was, and of the past, that it is, that it is eternally, for all time. (1988: 55)

He adds to this that the past is an entity on its own it exists outside of any individuals, as a past in general. There are two things to be noted here. First that this past has not passed, but is always. We need to step away here from the meaning we are accustomed to give to the word past as something that has occurred before the present but occurs no longer. Rather, the past is always coexistent with the present. The two always occur together, rather than following each other, like a present becoming past the moment it has ceased being present. Deleuze describes it as such:
It is in this sense that there is a pure past, a kind of past in general: The past does not follow the present, but on the contrary, is presupposed by it as the pure condition without which it would not pass. In other words, each present goes back to itself as past. (1988: 59)

If we momentarily recall DeNora here, we can see now why music aids not only in remembering who one is, but also in ones construction. As a remembering of the past has little to do with going back in time, this act of remembering, through music, at the same time constructs a certain present into the past.

Second, and following from the first notion, the act of recollection exists in stepping into this being of the past, which exists outside of oneself, and looking for a memory. This leap into the ontology of the past, as Deleuze explains this act, consists of firstly placing ourselves into the past in general, then into a certain region of the past (Bergson in Deleuze, 1988: 21

61). These regions are not separate collections of memories but rather always contain all of the past, just in different levels of contraction. Finding a memory then, is something like the focussing of a camera. [...] Little by little it comes into view like a condensing cloud; from the virtual state it passes into the actual.... (1988: 56). It is this actualizing of a memory that at the same time allows for the remembering, the reliving of the original experience, and adds to the memory, constructing a new present that is immediately added to the past. Deleuze states elsewhere that memory is not an actual image which forms after the object has been perceived, but a virtual image coexisting with the actual perception of the object (Deleuze : 150). Memories then, when not remembered by their owner, can be said to be virtual, only being actualized in the act of remembering and reliving them. Their being virtual however does not mean that memories have no existence prior to be remembered. They are always there, yet lack actualization. Denying memories an existence prior to being remembered would be confusing the virtual with the possible. An explanation of the difference between the possible and the virtual, is given by Pierre Lvy, in the introduction to his book Becoming Virtual: Reality in a Digital Age (1998). He states that the possible is opposite to the real, it is all that reality is, only lacking existence (Lvy 1998: 24). The virtual on the other hand is already real, it is very much present, but not actualized. In this sense it is like the description of the past we have given above, whereas a possible being realized is like a present becoming and going back into the past. Lvy describes the virtual as a kind of problematic complex, the knot of tendencies or forces that accompanies a situation, event, object or entity, and which invokes a process of resolution: actualization (1998: 24). An example from Lvys work is a seed before it sprouts into a tree. Accompanying the seed is the problem of the shape the eventual tree will take. The shape is not predetermined, but is created by the tree along the way, in combination with the circumstances the growing tree encounters. It should be added then, that a virtual being actualized is always a positive process of creation, rather than a negative selection of one among many actuals.

Let us compare this with musical memory. Such memory can never be a possible, which is predetermined by the real. If we were to give an overly simplified example of the latter, let us consider a set list announced by a band before a tour as a possible. This set being played by the band on a show in the tour is the realization of this possible. All the songs on the list were already there yet not realized. A memory does not function in this way. As we have 22

seen, it is constituted through different presents of remembering the memory, all adding their particular connotations, which are not predetermined in the memory itself, to the memory. Consider again the example of the song Tallulah from the introduction of this chapter, and the moment I heard it again at the concert. At this time, hearing the song live was added to the memory, which already contained the connotations of my former girlfriend, but this addition was in no way predetermined without realization; it was not a possible. Rather, it came to be through a negotiation of a problem the construction of the memory by the memory itself in combination with circumstances the concert at which the song was played.

One author who has applied the concept of virtuality to the realm of music is William Echard. In an article titled Sensible Virtual Selves: Bodies, Instruments and the Becomingconcrete of Music (2006), he applies the concept to the relation between the body and the (musical) instrument. While this relation is not directly relevant to the issue at hand, his description of the virtual does have some merits for our case. When looking at the virtuality of music, he asks how the virtual can be experienced. Considering the explanation the workings of the virtual and the actual above, it may be tempting to say that the answer to this question is simply that the virtual makes itself known through an actualization, that the actual somehow offers a view of the virtual. Deleuze denies this however, stating that the virtual and actual are at all times separate. That is to say, they cannot be condensed in a single image (Deleuze 1994: 209).

Echard recognizes this criticism and points to Deleuzes view that certain modes of action and thought can engender a sensitivity to the virtual (Echard 2006: 9). Echard discerns two methods one can become sensitive to the virtual. One is through multiplicity. He gives the example of a musical work being performed on multiple occasions. They all differ from each other yet point to a virtual object which remains perpetually suggested (2006: 10). Again we can look at the example of the song Tallulah. Listening to this song in my room or hearing it in concert, in both cases the same memory of my ex girlfriend is referred to, and is experienced. In other words, these multiple and different actualizations refer to the same perpetually suggested virtual. The second method of achieving sensitivity to the virtual is through affect. Echard states: [A] musical work has an affect insofar as it actualizes certain capacities. Each work has a distinctive affect because it has its own unique capacities for affecting... (2006:10). Here we are reminded of the third step of experiencing memory from 23

the beginning of this chapter. A human being becomes sensitive to the virtual (step four and five) through experiencing a certain affect in a song (step one through three).

Here then we seem to come somewhat full circle. Let us recuperate by giving a concrete overview of what we have established to happen when a memory is triggered by music. It starts with a song being played. The listener is reminded of a memory by first recognizing the presence of the song and getting handed several options to respond, which is done by the song as object. The affective link is made between the song and the listener. Feeling that there is something about the song, the listener as subject recalls exactly what it is, and then remembers and relives the memory to the full extent. Zooming in on these last two steps, we have determined that the act of recollection consists of stepping into a (the?) past that is both a general past and is in the now. We have defined this recollection as a virtual (the memory) being actualized into a present, namely the moment of the song. This present fades back into the past, which we have translated as the memory being added to. Thus we hope to have given a somewhat clear picture of the process of remembering that occurs when a listener is exposed involuntarily to a song that is related to an event in his memory.

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4. Technogical Nostalgia
We have initiated a differentiation between voluntary and involuntary auditory memory in the first chapter, based on the one hand on the work of Weber, who described sound souvenirs as a way of storing and taking along ones memories, to be voluntarily retrieved at any time. On the other hand, De Vries and Van Elferen gave the example of Marcel Proust who was involuntarily struck by the memory of his grandmother after dipping a madeleine in his tea and taking a bite. Having now looked at two aspects of the experience of memory that is the organizing of memory in archives and the way in which memory is set in motion one question that comes to mind after these analyses is whether a distinction between involuntary and voluntary memory is at all relevant.

After reconsidering voluntary and involuntary memory, the distinction is somewhat void. That is not to say that it doesnt exist, rather that it is of less importance when considering the process of recollection. Let us imagine again the examples that we have offered before, at the start of the second and third chapter. First the example of chapter two in which a memory, at first evoked by an accidental song on the radio, gained extra meaning because the person hearing it linked it to an occasion that happened just that day, namely the passing away of her first grandfather. After the death of her second grandfather, she started playing this song and the connotation that was stuck to it, because of the first happening, changed to a new memory. The second pertained to a lost love. The person first heard the song at the moment he met his future girlfriend. Upon hearing it again in concert, after they had broken up, he was reminded of all sorts of things about the girl and the relationship.

Consider what happens when the two persons hear their songs in present day. Both will undoubtedly be reminded of their respective memories. Let us consider where the difference is located. It doesnt lie in the outcome, which is the same for both examples. You hear a song and are taken back to the event in the past the passing away of the grandfathers and the ending of a relationship. We could, like we have suggested at the start of the paper, differentiate here between these memories being voluntarily and involuntarily evoked. In the first case, this means that whenever we feel like thinking of the past, be it the grandfathers or the former girlfriend, we would only have to put up the corresponding song to be taken back

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to that moment. In the latter case, we would be taken back to that moment by the respective song incidentally being played on the radio, outside of our control. In the end however, these differences may be of less importance when considering the actual process of remembering. The effect of being taken back, the process of recollection, is arguably exactly the same, with perhaps a difference in severity: We hear the music, we think of the event. The distinction between voluntary and involuntary is ultimately one of instigation. Proust dipped his madeleine cookie into his tea and was incidentally reminded of his grandmother. After this moment, he can always dip his cookie in the tea whenever he wants to be reminded of his grandmother, thus voluntarily instigating the same memory that De Vries and Van Elferen labelled as involuntary. Likewise, if the owners of sound souvenirs in Webers example were to incidentally hear whatever song on a radio somewhere, rather than purposefully hear it on the portable audio device they carried, the effect of remembering would be the same.

The preliminary conclusion then, is that there may indeed be a difference in voluntary and involuntary recollection through music, but that the question remains whether this difference is at all relevant in the bigger picture. Outside of the acknowledgement that this difference is there, what does it really matter if the access to the memory was voluntary or not, when what we should really be looking at is the experience of the memory itself, through the music? Let us now take the two approaches of nostalgia that we have used so far, and place them in a frame of new music media and digital technologies. With the rise of these new technologies, we can say that new possibilities to experience such nostalgia are emerging. We have already mentioned De Certeau in the second chapter. When considering his analysis of street names in cities, he writes how such names lose over time their original meaning and connotations are added by all those who pass through these streets:
Disposed in constellations that hierarchize and semantically order the surface of the city, operating chronological arrangements and historical justifications, these words (Borrgo, Botzaris, Bougainville...) slowly lose, like worn coins, the value engraved on them, but their ability to signify outlives its first definition. [T]hese names make themselves available to the diverse meanings given them by passers-by (De Certeau 1984: 132).

We can imagine the role of a portable MP3 player in expanding meanings given to (urban) landscapes. A user walking through the city wearing headphones will be given a decisively 26

different view if view is the correct word when adding audio to the mix of the experience of his surroundings than without being plugged into his portable audio device. An entirely different set of impulses can be imagined while on the move when listening to music. These impulses may affect the memories an individual constructs around these locations that he visits. This kind of an outsourcing of memory experience construction, maintenance, and recollection is one of the merits of the development of new technologies. One philosopher who has explored the notion of memory expanded into technology is Bernard Stiegler, whose best known work on the subject is Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus (1998). In a recent interview, Stiegler gave the example of a wave-power generating factory on the north-west coast of France. This device was conceptualised by Simondon as the first time a machine was built that directly employed its environment to perform a specific function in just being itself, in this case the natural flow of waves generating electrical power (1989). Stiegler suggests that a similar conceptualization is possible when speaking of humans and technology. He states that:
we had developed this idea of a human techno-geographical milieu, according to which it would no longer be sea water that informed the process. Instead the issue becomes that of the participation of human geography in the process of associated technical milieux (Venn et al. 2007: 334-335).

A participation of human geography would in our case be the memory that is being constructed and experienced through the associated technical milieu, the emerging technologies of portable audio devices. These devices allow for more and more ways to store and organize memory through increased functionality, such as the creation of playlists and the shuffle feature. Similar to the waves of the sea in the example of Simondon, it is likely that we will not consciously change the way we interact with memories, but that instead, this process is a more or less natural one. In other words, we will not have to act differently in order to experience these changes. Stiegler expands on the idea of technology as being able to fulfil an exteriorizing role for memory in his book Technics and Time, 1. He states that through freeing itself from genetic inscription (Stiegler 1998: 169) memory pursues a process of liberation. He mentions examples of objects that are inscribed with memory, such as books and machines, but also and noticeably the madeleine and, with a look at the future, holographic memories

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(1998: 169). Through these objects, memories can be diffused and at the same time reorganized and stored. Stiegler defines these objects as tertiary memory. Anything that allows for the recording in the broadest sense of the word of memory outside an individual falls under this category. The act of inscribing memory through technology into an object Stiegler too uses the term out-sourcing he calls grammatization (Barker, 2009). Coming full circle, this grammatization is exactly what is referred to in the works that have form the basis of this essay. We see it with Jerome, the respondent whose story Bull used to point out the way in which nostalgia is evoked through the iPod. We come across it in the portable radios as sound souvenirs, which Weber explained were used by tourists to take abroad memories of home. It is also present in Prousts madeleine that De Vries and Van Elferen refer to, albeit unknown to Proust at first. The idea of archiving, which can be said to be exactly this, grammatization, formed the core of the second chapter. Recollecting memory outside oneself stored in an MP3 player? was the basis of the third part. And now we come upon it again. Finally, if we look at the way technology for music listening is developing, this grammatization will keep increasing in presence. We already see cloud computing, which has been hailed as the 5th utility, next to water, electricity, gas and telephony (Buyya et al. 2008: 599) as an emerging trend in the music industry. Services such as Spotify or Pandora, allow for the streaming of music from an online database, removing the need for users to put copies of the music files on their portable devices. Where first the physical carrier of music was removed through the process of digitalization, the music is now not even carried with us as code on a hard disk anymore, but stored somewhere out there. This is at the same time an increase of grammatization in the sense that there is a bigger distance between the listener and the locus of their memories and a decrease, as the need for storage is removed. But these services add more. Consider for instance the sharing of music through public and collaborative playlists. This notion carries along a host of new conditions and meanings to musical memory. We live in an age where the evocation of memories through sounds especially music becomes more and more acknowledged. We want to be able to recreate the music that we cherish, and technology plays a big part in how we can retrieve and maintain these musical treasures. Sound and memory are deeply intertwined, not just trough the commercially exploited nostalgia on oldies radio stations, but through the exchange of valued songs by 28

means of pristine recordings and cultural practices such as collecting, archiving and listening (Bijsterveld & Van Dijck 2009: 219). What will new technological conditions mean for our future musical memories?
[W]e will only know in times to come. Perhaps (Derrida 1995: 36).

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Musical References
Isley Brothers. 1974. The Highways of My Life: 3+3. T-Neck. Procul Harum. 1967. A Whiter Shade Of Pale: Procul Harum. Deram Records. Sonata Arctica. 2001. Tallulah: Silence. Tico Tico Studio. Spinefarm.

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