Sometimes the right song can literally work magic.

I cant speak for everyone, but I tend to associate certain songs and music with sort of time-date stamps. When I hear old Alice in Chains, it reminds me of rainy Saturday mornings in Rancho Bernardo, when I’d hop on my first BMX and go puttering around the neighborhood jumping off curbs.

This relates to something I learned about at Defcon 15 - the concept that you can ‘control peoples minds’ by choosing your words carefully. For example if I were to say:
whatever you do, do NOT think of a giant pink elephant wearing a fez, riding a unicycle

Your mind would have to construct that scene, only to “not think about it”. Tecahnically I just controlled your mind, as simple as it was.

It works the same way for me with music. The minute I hear a song, stuff just blips into focus in my mind. When I hear blind by KoRN, I think of playing doom1 via my 19.2k modem on cold and crisp winter nights back in 9th grade, chatting with fellow tiny young people on Dream net (anybody remember the old San Diego bbs scene?)

The point that I’m laboriously trying to scrape towards is that under the assumption that some peoples minds function similarly to my own, the right song in the right place could make all the difference, and it happened to me this morning on the way into work - so I thought I would share.

If you know someone well enough, you can make them smile by putting on your sniper hat, and firing off one precisely placed song. Thats a good feeling