It seems like you can capture a person’s heart and soul by being in the right place at the right time. There is certain art where I not only remember when I experienced it for the first time, but also the whole context around how it specifically spoke directly to me.
There are little vines of memory that replay in my mind. A song that my mom would sing to me when I was 4. The Nutcracker, while watching the Christmas Tree miraculously grew on stage. That scene in Raggedy Anne and Raggedy Andy when they came to life. A painting of the barn in my backyard, and the barn collapsed days later. A Reading Rainbow episode with the little sign language interpreter bubble in the lower right of the screen. Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was 9 and being exposed to a film ending that made absolutely no sense to me and being mystified and changed by that. The impressionist oil paintings in my grandparents guest room, depicting cobblestone streets in the rain; people running for shelter and the light reflecting off the stones. Various low budget or poorly written shows, film, and music that I grew up on and will never leave behind. Depictions of the Santa Ynez Valley by Eyvind Earle, a trip through which I would make with my family almost every year. Tron, and later the TV series Automan that introduced a yearning optimism about the future. Dune, directed by David Lynch, which played on HBO on repeat for what seemed like an entire summer, when I was just old enough to grasp the plot by the end of the season, and by which I learned important truths about life. Reading the Chocolate War and I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier, which reassured me that the cruel nature of human beings can be overcome and that everyone feels lonely sometimes. Reading Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, which taught me in a strange roundabout way the importance of truly being understood by another and of truly understanding someone else on a deep level. The book Cosmos (I didn’t see the series until much later), which inspired a love of cosmology, astronomy, and science in general. John Zorn’s Naked City, which introduced a completely new concept of music and art, opening my mind to a new dimension in creativity. An unrecorded song, sung at a memorial service and indelibly stamped on my brain. All of this just a random brain dump of what comes to mind this evening as I write this. Likely many others experienced these things, but the timing was wrong and they just scoffed. I don’t relate, but some people feel like Insane Clown Posse speaks to them. To each their own.
If you’re in the right place at the right time, you become part of someone’s identity for life. When were you in the right place at the right time?