For me it seemed crazy how some people would be able to cite the date out of nowhere when talking about certain events. Specially when I had just turned eighteen and put myself out there in new friend groups.
It only ever became clear to me two years after that,when suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere I started remembering the date ( like saying fall of 2022 for example ).
I feel like a connection to certain eras of our lifetime ( like a season of the year ) is generally the collection of feelings, thoughts, ambitions and memories that Remain Attached to them sometime after experiencing them. Almost like how when we really remember something from yesterday or last week, we really are remembering the last time we remembered it, which traces back directly to when we experienced it. Or more evidently when we try to remember dreams, We really are remembering our last remembrance of it. Notice how one never really remembers dreams they don’t think about right after they wake up, since dreams mainly exist in our short time memory slots.
In a broader sense I think the collective nostalgia/feeling we have towards certain chopped up seasons of life are just like this, differing in the fact that that feeling is refined through days of uncounscious brain activity with a spice of emotional convergence.
For me something that will always be a direct reminder of a certain era ( Parallel to smelling sth for most people ) is hearing the music that I used to listen to in that era. If I close my eyes for a moment, it can almost grab me and put me in a slice of that time from that era.
Lately I’ve been listening to more music on shuffle in my playlist and man it feels like I enter a time machine with a one-way view when I put my headphones on. Its towards the end of spring 2025 when I am writing this, through last week or so, Miraculous ordering of songs are showing up in my shuffle queues, at least one song that defines the spring of last year for me. Since I am greedy in giving meta-physical reasons to my thoughts, I feel like the only reason for this should be the amount of effect the weather has in Pseudo-Random-Number-Generators used in the shuffle algorithms, Probably not though.
Anyways this has been a mind dump on how music can really define and remind us of certain times, really bring out that nostalgia, create vivid images of those times for us.
Thanks for reading.