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I have always been impressed by two of our senses to snap us back in time...even if for only a millisecond, where you can actually feel transported back in time...actually feel that time again.

Smell:
When I get a whiff of jet exhaust, it brings me right back to being in Navy jet school at NAS Millington, where I was going through A school and we all got on a flight line for the first time. Odd, because I had smelled jet exhaust as a kid living in Subic Bay, and the beach was right near the flight line at Cubi Point, but that isn’t what jet exhaust reminds me of.

When I lived in Japan, the odd smell of fish, sewage, and diesel exhaust combined to make a unique smell, that to this day, if that combination arises, it brings me back there. And so on.

Music:
When I hear certain music, it also transports me. I can FEEL for a split second what it was like to be alive back then.

Hearing the Bee Gees brings me back to my Navy days being on liberty in discos over in Europe, as does the sound of Steely Dan, particularly the “Aja” album. When I hear the song “Baker Street”, it almost ALWAYS brings a strong wave of emotion from the morning I woke up while our carrier was anchored off Rota, Spain getting ready to outchop back to the states after a deployment, they played Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” as the wake up song, with the emphasis on the lyrics:

And when you wake up, it’s a new morning
The sun is shining, it’s a new morning
And you’re going, you’re going home

When I was dating the woman who is now my wife, I was taking saxophone lessons, and absorbing all the jazz greats, buying their music, and getting to know them...Ben Webster became my favorite, but I came to love John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, and Dexter Gordon. Oddly, I never developed a taste for Charlie Parker. Don’t know why.

And although I tried my hardest to emulate the tone and phrasing of Ben Webster, the one that invokes memories for me of those days where I was dating my wife, taking trips to Cape Cod and Nantucket, it was the sound of John Coltrane (particularly his “Ballads” album) that when I hear it today, it transports me right back. If even only for a blink of an eye.

And “The Year of The Cat” is one of those songs for me, and brings back to the memory of another woman I was dating.

That is why I love music. Just love it.