By Tabitha Bozeman
A lot has happened this week. Coldplay is enjoying a moment as the song “Sparks” from the album Parachute has climbed the charts into the top 50 and is still rising. Coldplay is no stranger to having hits, with at least 67 major awards and over 250 award nominations during their tenure together. What is interesting about this song soaring up the charts is that it was released over a quarter of a century ago.
One of the most viral news items this week happened with “Sparks” as its soundtrack when a CEO and his girlfriend were caught on the jumbotron “kiss cam” at a Coldplay concert. Now, the CEO has resigned in shame, and Coldplay is reaching yet another generation as spoofs of the affair-seen-round-the-social-media-world churn out faster than we can chuckle over them.
Other losses and discoveries have filled the last couple of weeks, as well: Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played “Theo Huxtable,” the beloved brother on The Cosby Show, died in a tragic drowning accident this week; Ozzy Osbourne passed away after one final performance; and a new interstellar comet was discovered. All these news items — from the kiss cam to the comet — have their own soundtracks drifting in and out of our collective consciousness. Singers from Paul Simon to Billie Eilish have sung about comets through the decades, The Cosby Show had one of the most recognizable theme songs ever, Ozzy had more hits than I can list here, and Coldplay, well we have already covered them.
Music connects us, ties our current lives to memories, comforts, motivates, and inspires us. Each of us experiences our own life soundtracks made up of music we choose to listen to, as well as music that floats around us as we move through our lives. None of us know exactly what song will be playing within hearing range the very moment something momentous, or tragic, or mortifying happens, but once connected it is forever attached. Years and years can go by without hearing the song, but the moment you do you are transported back in time.
Sometimes, though, the music comes after the memory, inspired by the memory. 
The other day, I picked up a perpetual calendar I was gifted, and flipped through it, noting that there were no dates marked in September. Mid-flip to October, a small pink mark caught my eye, and I flipped back to, looking more closely at the bottom of the page. There on the line beside the 28th I saw it. In small, neatly formed cursive, was the name “Katie June.” Sometime before she passed away, my grandmother had come across the calendar and marked her birthday for me. The very instant I recognized her handwriting, I was flooded with memories: the library chairs we sat in together when I was a child; singing through various songbooks as we lounged in her Winnebago during our cross country drive in the 80’s; walking through downtown Anniston with her; polishing silver with her; holding her hand and laying my head on her shoulder before she slept one last time; listening to her play her favorite songs on the piano; singing along with my sister as Grandmother played Kermit the Frog’s “It Ain’t Easy Being Green,” and so many more. She loved music, and thoughts of her always have their own unique soundtrack.
Leo Tolstoy said, “Music is the shorthand of emotion.” Music makes our memories. Privately woven through our remembrances, and collectively binding us together, it becomes a language of sound, an alchemy layering time and place in unexpected ways.
