"When people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchanging motifs...but if they meet when they are older...their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them." -Milan Kundera
I knew from the first moment I saw a trailer for the film Her that I would absolutely adore it. As suspected, I fell in love with the film. I watched it several times. And now, I'm anxiously awaiting my copy on DVD, so I can watch it over and over again.
One of the reasons I love the film so is because the relationship that develops between Theodore and Samantha reminds me of a long distance relationship. More so, the ways in which technology plays a role in relationship complicated by distance. When trying to maintain intimacy with a partner across the distance, the phone and computer take on a different relevance in your day-to-day life as you exchange hundreds of texts through out the day, schedule time to video chat, and email back and forth. While you know there is another person on the other side of the line, you spend more time in an intimate relationship with your telephone and computer than anyone else. And that is the part that really resonated with me about the relationship in the film.
There are dozens of reasons I love this film including the familiarity of the character of Theodore, who reminds me of one of my long distance partners, and the fragility of human emotion, which reminds all of us how we should seek out as much joy as possible in the time we are here.
And for what it is worth, every single time I hear this song from the film, all those emotions and memories come flooding to the surface.
Music is Memory is a project that seeks to understand connections between music and memory. Primarily, I am interested in collecting the memories (and emotions) that we, as individuals, have attached to particular songs. I "collect" memories of hearing a song for the first time, but also how these memories change and meld over time.