I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ documentary on country music (8 2-hour episodes on PBS). I am a bit surprised at how emotionally this series has impacted me. Yes, there is the ache of *nostalgia*. From the roots of the word, there is the image of *homecoming again*. As I approach 87, things remembered become stronger and impact me more. So, reconnecting with long ago memories has a purpose which I believe has something to do with *death.* It has to do with what Orogine said would be my completeness that I must focus on now. I was raised on country music long before I started to turn my attention to classical music when I began piano lessons at 8 years old. After giving some lectures in New York, I was flying home and began to watch the movie Honeysuckle Rose with Willie Nelson and Dyan Cannon. As I watched, scotch in hand, I began to tear up and finally tarted to fully breakdown crying. What was happening was that I was hearing early country singers: Jimmy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hank Williams and others. I couldn’t help myself. The attendant was concerned as were the passengers. Finally, my crying stopped and I sunk into the movie. Later, I told my parents about this experience. My dad said he knew why it happened. He told me that when I was a baby, he would rock me in his arms as he sang along to country songs on the radio. To cure his stuttering. I never knew he stuttered. The coupling of those early voices and the emotional response of crying was strikingly stronger than any conscious memory of those singers would bring about. I think I was hearing what I heired when I was a baby. Research now indicated that implicit memories occur as early as birth to three months and that explicit memory begins to form by six months. So what I was experiencing on the plane was very likely those early voices on the radio and my dad’s singing. This is likely as well, what has brought up so much feeling and emotion and memory in watching Ken Burns’ wonderful documentary.<\/p>\n
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I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ documentary on country music (8 2-hour episodes on PBS). I am a bit surprised at how emotionally this series has impacted me. Yes, there is the ache of *nostalgia*. From the roots of the word, there is the image of *homecoming again*. As I approach 87, things remembered become stronger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2107,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2106\/revisions\/2107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}