Colors, Lyrics, and the Musing of the Mind

Spencer Roach
Apr 24
2 min read

Updated: May 15

Music transcends association and identification. It has the unique ability to transport memories to the forefront of your mind and relate vivid, lived moments to some auditory stimulant. The Civil War’s Barton Hollow brings me back to rushing from covered entrances to random dry nooks on a rain drenched day navigating a hilly campus my freshman year of college. My second generation iPod touch and wired headphones tucked inside the crevasses of my hoodie in hopes of not electrocuting (2025 update, still clueless if that was even a thing) myself while I flow with the crowds from building to building; folksy-blues adjacent harmonies serenading the natural self exploration 18 year old Spence was going through. Or the way that “Yeah!” by Usher and company reminds me of a sweaty middle school gym where us fellas were finally allowed to dance with the honies from our Texas history class. "Sup, Hailee" rings in my head. We would jump and giarate and pretend to know what “hold the head steady, I’ma milk the cow” actually meant (2025 update, I think I know now but still maybe a bit clueless. They were in the middle of the dance floor right? Like surely he wasn't...right?). Okay anyways, the way that music can define and explain transformational life moments is a powerful, and I would argue an innately human sensibility, that engages our capacity to experience art not just through pleasing notes and tones but real life tangible -- nay embodied and visceral -- experiences.

I wanted to take this thought exercise and flip it upside down. Can I take some sort of lived experience and attribute music to it at the end rather than some confluence of the two simultaneously? This isn’t a novel idea. Take, for example, a director picking the perfect song for a pivotal scene in a movie. Or, an ekphrastic poet ala John Keates and his precious Grecian urn. It is human nature to look to art to explain and justify a lived moment. We may see, taste, touch, or smell something and then look to music to help define and make sense of those experiences.

I’ve been really into adult coloring books. Get your laughs out now. They, to me, offer a mindfulness and grounding that say a light walk in sunny 72 degree weather or an ice cold Bud heavy after a long day at work may do so for others. But the intrigue of creating something, as pedestrian as coloring may be, left me wanting more to connect with it artistically. So I took finished products and then searched the recesses of my brain to see what songs I could use to define/explain the styles I created. For some of these, I came up empty. For others, I had to write my own poetry. By and large, music allowed me to offer an explanation of what I created.