Lullaby

'I would wrap you in angels, just to keep you safe. 

I would walk to the Sun, just to hold you close. 

While the world breaks your heart, I'll be here for the fall. 

Though the days might betray you, know that I never will.'

This the very first paragraph from the song 'Lullaby', one of the only 3 songs that "Martyrs & Poets" released before disbanding.

I do have the other and more popular 'Replay' in my playlist, but this one strikes closer to home, I don't exactly know why. I'm not exactly what you would call a romantic so that's not it. Maybe it's the situation in which I heard this song for the first time, that it kinda stayed with me.

It was during the last few scenes of an episode from 'Criminal Minds' when Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) reconnects with his son after ages.

This phenomenon,  when we associate a certain song/tune to a past memory, real or imaginative or to a certain sense/emotion/situation, is known as a 'Song - Memory Association'. The same way our olfactory system associates a certain odor, good or bad with a certain person, activity or memory.

Anyways, enough with the scientific gyaan. What I wanted to jot down here in this post is what I associate this specific song to.

It was the summer of 2013, the month of July to be more specific when I met this girl I got infatuated to. Right around the time I heard and got fixated to this song. I'm not sure if she fits into the song well or if she needs to be cushioned from the problems of the world and all the stuff that Nate Picard wishes for his muse in this song but as I associate this song with her, I do wanna wrap her in Angels. Whenever I listen to this song, I can remember her sitting across me in a striped salmon - colored shirt, the same color that I was also coincidentally wearing.

'So take all your faith

Be more than I ever will

Lullaby Baby

Lullaby Baby I'll keep you here

While the world might break you, be strong in your will

And Trade all your scars for love

And be wreckless with love

Be more than your father

Don't betray all your hope because love conquers all

I would wrap you in angels, just to keep you safe'

It's not just this song. There are a variety of songs that remind of situations frozen in time. Linkin Park's 'In the End' sends me back to my boarding school days when I heard it on a collector's album called 'Progressive', for the very first time, on the shiny new stereo that our housemaster had so graciously installed in the dormitory. This was also the first song, the lyrics of which I had learnt by heart.

The first song on Side A of the cassette was 'In the End', followed by 'This is How You Remind Me' by Nickelback. We would always listen to these two and then rewind the cassette to the beginning. Until we bought LP's albums and started fixating on 'Numb', 'Breaking the Habit', 'Points of Authority' and other hits. So a week back in the gym when my iPod played 'In the End' and 'How you Remind Me' one after the other, it was enthralling what I experienced next. Using Hiro Nakamura's powers (TV Show - Heroes), I was teleported back in time, when I was 14 and standing in awe, in front of the wooden box that held the stereo.

My playlist has evolved over the years as I'm sure everyone else's also must have but these songs, like lullabies sung to my subconscious mind, are etched into my memory not only in the form of tunes and lyrics but vivid and living memories.