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I want to feel like this forever.
The feeling of 71 and sunny. I want the air to feel this crisp, the colors this vivid, the feeling in my gut this visceral. I want endless summer.
This moment is a breath of fresh air that's escaped me for months. I love feeling whole again. A veil has been lifted from my vision, and I finally feel warm again. I've been shivering for so long.
And thanks to the pensive, ethereal chords of "Sienna" by The Marías resonating in the background, I'll always remember this exact moment.
***
I see the world incredibly temporarily. I don't have a great memory, and this makes me live almost exclusively in the present. And right now, I love it.
Why can't every day feel like this?
As I bask in this feeling, I’m just as present in my other memories that emanate the feeling of an endless summer — a trip to Long Beach in 2022, the first weeks of college, outdoor tennis practices years prior — moments that truly make me smile and fade away from reality.
It's a weightlessness I can't describe. I'm not stressed, I can breathe, I'm happy; completely detached from anything around me. My mind, for once, is clear.
But even as I feel so real, imagining endless days just like this and my life being perfect and peaceful, I know endless summer won't last.
Endlessness has never been physical. Feeling good is only real because of the juxtaposition it holds with the opposite. And though I know I will chase this feeling and long for it until it comes back, I know what it really is.
It's endless because, even though time can't stop, or the feeling can't last forever, the memory of it will live on. And in that moment, there's no point worrying about prolonging it or facing the reality of losing it.
All I can do is feel, and remember.
When I think about the Long Beach trip, I can see the restaurant, the scooter, the pier, as if I'm there. At the same time, Seafood Sam's "Ramsey" drifts into my ears, the beat reverberating through my mind just as it did when I was really there, grounding me in that memory.
Music is the one throughline in all these moments, the one perfect way to make them last.
Molding your memories
I use music as a mold for memory. It's imperfect, a replica, subject to alterations.
It's not exact, but it doesn’t need to be. To me, that makes it even more useful. Why not romanticize? Why not see every ripple as a wave and treat every memorable experience as defining?
And maybe you can do that with your favorites album in your camera roll, or your private finsta, or journaling. There's validity to all. But let me prove to you that music does it better than anything.
Music is linked to memory in dozens of studies, and some have even linked music to improving the memory of people with Alzheimer's. It’s undoubtedly a powerful force.
Andy Bennett, a professor of cultural sociology at Griffith University in Australia, researched how music has become an object of cultural memory, even more than photos or writing.
"Music is probably the more potent thing because it’s a very abstract concept," he said. "People can own it in ways they can't own a novel. Music is usually a kind of a partially formed narrative as well. It tells a story, but it leaves gaps within the narrative that you can flesh out with your own understanding of what it is."
For the same reason you resonate with a lyric that hits close to home, these gaps inside songs and albums leave a half-filled canvas for you to paint your own experiences and complete. Often, it doesn’t matter what song was playing when something important happened, but rather that a song was playing.
Dr. Bill Page, a senior researcher at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, researched music and nostalgia's effects on public consumption in marketing. The study found its subjects preferred music from around their early 20s and nearly stopped enjoying new music around age 35.
"One explanation (for the research findings) is that there's a lot more going on when you're in your 20s (and) late teens," he said. "The world starts to open up for you. There's a whole bunch of new memories being formed."
As these memories pile up, sifting through them can feel impossible. The first days of college might feel like months, and you can live so much life since a specific good memory that it's no longer at the forefront of your mind.
I've mastered my own memory through consistent, intentional playlist curating. I listen and capture songs that play while I'm on a trip or an adventure — maybe one that plays in the car, one from a restaurant, one someone shows me for the first time — all when I was distinctly feeling something.
"(Music) zaps you back to that place and time exactly, and you can remember where you were and what you were doing and just how it felt," said Micah Rind, a digital creator and an ASU alum. "I can look at playlists, or a specific song can come back on, and I can remember being 16 and in high school, running around with friends, or I can remember being in a specific city, traveling around and hearing that for the first time."
Almost anyone can relate to the brief memory fragments that music unintentionally transports them back to — memories that would not let themselves be forgotten. But these scattered flashbacks are subconscious, so being proactive to reign in and capture memories intentionally through music can vastly expand your memory library.
Instead of taking notes, save songs. I keep them in chronological order, so I can relive a moment from the start, but you can choose whatever method feels most right to you.
Keep consuming new music. Listen to your tried and true, but don't get caught in what you've always listened to. Experiencing new music — with new memories attached — is the best way to grow as a person and remember who you were in the past.
"Listen as broadly as you can so that you feel nostalgic about as much as possible," Page said. “This is my advice as an old man to a young man: Listen to as much as possible. On the other hand, take photos of as much as possible. Go nuts with it … Know that nostalgia is coming for you and prepare for it."
'Summer's over when I die'
I can't remember all the memories I've forgotten — and I never will.
But these moments, these weekends with my friends in high school, seasons of my life in college; these time capsules within playlists will always be alive.
It's further proof that music is the greatest force there is. I remember walking down Lemon Street on my way to class in January 2023 because I was listening to "Playa Playa" by D'Angelo on my "cleanse" playlist. I remember driving to Tulsa with my friend in 2021 because I was listening to "ILoveUIHateU" by Playboi Carti. I remember riding through Little Rock, Arkansas, at 16 because I was listening to "Note to Self" by J. Cole for the first time (I really believed him about Jonah Hill).
These are moments I'd never have remembered if not for consciously documenting and remembering them through music.
The best thing I ever did was capture 2022 in a playlist. No matter how much I forget, I'll always have 31 key moments from one of the most pivotal years of my life musically documented. It makes me smile a little each time I listen.
Write your own narrative. Be romantic. Everything is a story, and everything that you want to matter does — it only needs to mean something to you. Make these playlists; they might just change your life.
I may only be able to live in the present, but I can also live for the memory. I'll write and I'll document, I'll make a playlist of everything that feels right, and most of all, I will just sit here and feel.
I love being human. In moments like these, I can tell myself that suffering only exists to contextualize real joy.
Maybe I'll come back to Earth when the sun goes down in a couple hours. Maybe I won't, and I'll ride this high forever. Right now, that feels possible.
In moments of normalcy, I'll close my eyes and smile as familiar harmonies swell around me, fading away to a better place, another moment that makes me believe endless summer just might be real.
And when it isn't, at least I can play a song to remember what it felt like.
Edited by Savannah Dagupion, Leah Mesquita and Audrey Eagerton.
Reach the reporter at adirst@asu.edu and follow @andrewdirst on X.
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Andrew is a senior studying journalism and mass communication. This is his fourth semester with The State Press. He has also worked at The Arizona Republic and Cronkite News.
