Music Speak, When Sound Becomes Survival

The Power of a Cassette Tape

My mother would want a new cassette tape, so she'd send me into the stores and I would ask for Bonnie Tyler or Sergio Mendes.

Music moved my mother. When she listened to music she was never dangerous. She never struck me then. Music took her mind to the places that were still wounded within her. They also gave her the sensation of false happiness.

For a child living in chaos, music wasn't entertainment. It was a ceasefire.

What Music Can Do

Music is powerful. Sometimes it can do that. It can make you feel like everything is okay. Like life is beautiful and happiness is right around the corner.

But music can also hurt you more deeply than you've ever been hurt. Because with a single note, it touches right on the wound. Then as a song continues, it tramples on the wound until there are times when you can't resist the need for crying. For letting loose some of that pain that only music knows how to unlock.

The Time Machine

Then there are times when music takes you to where you've been, kind of like on a train ride. You just watch the years that came before. Who you were, the people who came and went. How you used to wear a scarf or a hat or high-heeled shoes and now you're all about understated comfort.

And sometimes, when music is really powerful, it takes you to a place you've never been but that you want to go to. That's where the best you is waiting.

Rocky in the final round, yes that's you delivering the knockout punch. That's you crossing the track of the something hundred meter race. That's you adored by crowds or simply applauded by your own soul.

The Only Drug That Helped

I think music often took my mother back in time and for short fleeting moments helped her believe that the present moment wasn't so bad.

I liked to watch her with music. Her asking me to get her a cassette was like picking up the only drug that could have done her some good.

What This Teaches Writers About Sensory Memory

This passage reveals something essential about memoir craft: sensory details carry emotional weight that exposition never can.

The Cassette as Symbol

"Her asking me to get her a cassette was like picking up the only drug that could have done her some good."

This single image does more work than a page of explanation could. It shows:

• My role as caretaker, even as a child

• My mother's pain and her coping mechanisms

• My understanding of what helped and what didn't

• The small mercy music provided in a dangerous home

Music as Character

In this piece, music isn't background—it's a character. It's the force that made my mother safe. The thing that "took her mind to the places that were still wounded within her."

When you write memoir, look for the sensory elements that did emotional work in your story. What sights, sounds, smells, or textures carried meaning beyond themselves?

The Dual Nature of Triggers

"Music can also hurt you more deeply than you've ever been hurt. Because with a single note, it touches right on the wound." This is the complexity memoir requires.

Music was both salvation and trigger. Safety and pain. False happiness and real relief. Don't flatten the contradictions—lean into them.

Writing With Sensory Detail

If you're writing memoir, ask yourself:

What sensory details carried emotional weight in your story?

• A specific song, smell, taste, texture

• The sound of footsteps, a door closing, a voice changing tone

• The feel of a fabric, the temperature of a room

What objects became symbols?

• For me, it was cassette tapes—the only drug that could help

• For you, it might be a piece of clothing, a food, a place, a ritual

What had dual meanings?

• Music was both safety and wound

• What in your story was both comfort and pain?

The Train Ride Back

"Music takes you to where you've been, kind of like on a train ride. You just watch the years that came before."

This is what memoir does too. It takes readers on a train ride through your past. The details you choose—the cassette tapes, the high-heeled shoes, the understated comfort—those are the scenery that makes the journey real.