🍄 Songs That Become Part of Our Lives

A few days ago I picked up my guitar and started learning a song.

It was the version Johnny Cash recorded of In My Life.

I used it over the photo slideshow at Mum's funeral. I’d heard it a dozen times while putting everything together. On the day itself, it quietly filled the room while decades of memories flickered across the screen.

This time, I wasn’t at the funeral.
I was sat at home with a guitar.

I started singing along.

When I reached the final line…

“I love you more.”

…I had to stop.

I broke down into sobs and tears.

Even now, just thinking about that line, hearing it in my head as I write this, I feel it open me up again, and tears come to my eyes.

It made me realise something I’ve understood for years but had never experienced quite like this.

Music doesn’t just remind us of memories.
It becomes woven into them.

I've seen this in psychedelic work too.

People come back to integration sessions and describe how a particular track, one that played at exactly the right moment in their journey, has become inseparable from the experience. They hear it weeks later and they're back in the feeling. The music didn't just accompany the memory. It became it.

The same process. A different door.

From now on, whenever I hear that version of In My Life, I probably won’t hear Johnny Cash first.

I’ll see Mum.
I’ll remember the photographs.
I’ll remember saying goodbye.

The song hadn’t made me sad.
It had opened a door to feelings that were already there.

That’s one of the strange things music can do.
Sometimes a song holds a feeling for us until we’re ready to feel it.

Sometimes that’s joy.
Sometimes it’s love.
Sometimes it’s grief.
And sometimes those things are impossible to separate.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what music actually does, and why it matters which music you choose, and when, especially in our psychedelic sessions.

There's something I’ve been building toward for a while now.

📚 Microdose of Wisdom

"Stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences."

— Brian Eno

🎵Psychedelic Supplements

East Forest's SPORES Ceremony, with his typical immersive, ritual approach, in a live format. The ceremonial intro begins at 12:07 and flows into the music at 23:58.