“The Song Remembers When” by Trisha Yearwood
I would be remiss as a southern girl, if I didn’t have a country song on this list. This song has perhaps the least complex lyrics but tell the most beautiful story. A woman in the middle of running errands hears a song on the radio that reminds her of an old flame. Her world, though long changed, is thrust back to that time and place where she was happy, young, and in love. Isn’t that the magical and fantastic thing about music? It can make memories, it can create a reality for us in an instant, a connection that is universally understood. When the song is over, the woman returns to her life, but she has that reawakening — that reminder–that inside she is still capable of that love, that it will always be with her. I love that LOVE and music can do that for us.
5songpjct: I tell people that I feel like a foreign exchange student in California. I wonder how you feel as a Southern woman in California, If it feels at odds with how and where you grew up. One thing I struggle with is this mid-western sense of your word is bond, that one is hard for me in California, because people don’t seem to feel the same way.
Victoria: I am not sure how old you were when you moved here, but I moved when I was 18. So ostensibly, I grew up in southern California. I have spent the majority of my life here. In two more years, I will have lived in California longer than I did in Mississippi.
I never moved back to Mississippi after I left, I went twice in the summer after I moved, but I haven’t been back for longer than a couple days at a time since then. The woman I became, that all happened in southern California. I feel like at this point I am from California. There are things, as you know, that are intrinsic to where you are from, that you just won’t ever shake. There are all these southern colloquialisms that I still use, these sensibilities that I still have and these beliefs that are hard to shake. For the most part, I spent 18-30 in Southern California and west L.A, Malibu, Marina del Rey and Culver City. It feels like who I am, as much as the Southern side.
5songpjct: It was great chatting with you this week, thank you for sharing it with me.