Here's an easy example: Often, when I hear someone say the word 'crazy' — "That was crazy." — the very next words I imagine are 'but that's how it goes'. Without missing a beat, the words file passed my mind's ear; it just happens, all by itself. "Crazy. But, that's how it goes" are the opening song lyrics from "Crazy Train," by Ozzy Osbourne. It's become so a part of my mind's landscape that the word 'crazy' has taken on an associative dynamism spontaneously connecting it, upon hearing, to more than one experience.
Further contributing to that dynamism is the added element of an ideologic relationship between the things, ideas, or words, being encountered. Following the above example of song lyrics, the immediacy of the association(s) with an experience might be strengthened when those lyrics, or some other relevant part of a song, is immediately connected with, or even tangentially relatable to, an event of great, or popular, consequence.
I remember that morning, very well. Late leaving for the bus, and not keeping to my regular, pre-work schedule of catching-up on the morning news, I hastily got myself together, donned backpack and Walkman, scrammed out the door, and hustled to the bus stop. The #15, one of the main bus routes into downtown Portland, Oregon, runs on Belmont Avenue; a well-used, neighborhood commute artery. That morning, however, there was almost no traffic.
It took a couple of stops before I noticed how quiet and still everyone on the bus was. I normally couldn't hear people conversing when wearing headphones, anyway, but the low background hum of traffic noises and voices, and other sounds of the transit commute, were conspicuously absent. As I looked around my fellow rider's faces, I saw several blank stares, concerned frowns — even some wringing hands — but nowhere near the usual level of errant aural flotsam. Seeing nothing to indicate trouble, I dismissed my observations and turned my attention back to the music.
After I arrived at work, and learned of the terrible loss of life in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania, I was in kind of a mental daze. Everyone was. Passenger airplanes used as bombs in a terrorist attack? The idea blew my mind. I had no frame of experience with which to process the information I was getting from the non-stop news coverage, and hyper-speculative commentator blather. For the rest of the working day, I'd go about doing my job, listening to the radio for news updates, and frequently chatting with co-workers.
In my mind, the word Tuesday had often been spontaneously associated with that old Cat Stevens song. Now, those associations include the events from 9/11/01. Sometimes, when I hear the song, I also think of that day. This is only the second time — the last was in 2007 — the anniversary has fallen on a Tuesday, so the association comes all the faster, for me.
We're encouraged to never forget what happened on that Tuesday, eleven years ago, when so much more than buildings and airplanes were destroyed. And, for what? How much senseless misery and tragedy and enmity, that exists in the world today, had its birth on 9/11/01? Or, at least, was exacerbated by the attacks? Indeed, the answer is undeniable: a lot.
LSL - 091112