Memories

Memories are mysteries. I find my memories to be very associative and strongly connected to my senses. Everybody is familiar with the "O! this song reminds me of..."-experience, I hope. But there is much more than just songs. The taste of cookies (like Madeleine cookies). Or smells. A friend of mine who lives abroad now, told me that he misses smells from home and he plans to go traveling in search of those smells to cure his homesickness. Sometimes smells hit me in the streets while I'm walking in Gent and suddenly I get an overall experience of smell, taste, colour, action, dimension. Those experiences can go back to my childhood but my Erasmus year appears to be a very fertile soil too.




Every era, age, generation has certain common memories. Unfortunatly they have given birth to a lot of spam and chainmails with inciting titles like "you have grown up in the 90ies if...". But to a certain extend it is true we can share common memories. I didn't realise until 10 minutes ago that also website can belong to this class of memories. During my stay in the Netherlands I used the internetradio Pandora.com a lot. It's an associative smartradio that enables you to discover new music you might like. And it works! Now, before you get very enthused by this and google this website, I have to dissappoint you. The website is no longer available from outside the US. Copyrights, you see... But there is an alternative: Deezer. It's another website I also discovered during my Erasmus stay. It started out as a legal music on demand (no downloads) website. It was still called blogmusic back then. Now, reborn as Deezer they also offer smart radio. I was using this radio while doing some online research and I was suddenly hit by a memory experience and realised at the same instant: website too will belong to common memories. No big deal, you might say, I had figured that out áges before you. But still, it's a nice thought that website can be added to the memorie triggers and you never know where your next google search will take you! à la googlesearch du temps perdu.