Happy last week of classes, everyone! I hope everyone had a great time opening their Spotify Wrapped yesterday. I know I sure did, despite some of my questionable music choices. 

As I listened through my Wrapped playlist yesterday, I couldn’t help but feel an immense sense of nostalgia for times that aren’t even that long ago. I feel like I’ve grown and changed tremendously since the beginning of 2023. I look back on my soundtrack of January to May, dominated by Kero Kero Bonito, Grimes and TOLEDO, and can’t help but feel I’m peeping on an entirely different person.

But, that’s how music and memory wed, isn’t it? Certain music will always be associated with a period in your life that you might not be in anymore. Those tunes will always take you back, playing over your memories in diluted audio.

Last week, I took my first journey abroad to visit my close friend studying in Florence, Italy. I did all the stereotypical touristy things: ate tons of pasta and pizza, visited the Colosseum, saw Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” and drank red wine at nine in the morning. Though I’m grateful to be back in the United States, I already miss my time traveling across Italy with my friends. Everything right now pales in comparison to waking up to a view of Brunelleschi’s Dome against an amber sunrise. 

Every time the trip has crossed my mind this week — which is often — I can’t stop envisioning the myriad of Italian street performers I saw. Each musician had their own story to tell through their music, using numerous different instruments such as violins, saxophones or their voices. Some of the songs I recognized; others I did not. 

There was a fleeting beauty to these buskers and their music. Standing before them, listening to their art, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Will they be here tomorrow?” and “Who else will remember this in a week?” It was the sort of thing where you had to live in the moment or you’d miss it.

Songs define the sound of my past, present and future. I cannot recall the title of the song an aged Italian violinist played while busking on the weathered cobblestone streets of Florence, yet the tune is engraved in my memory: a lilting, dulcet soundtrack for an experience I’ll tell my grandchildren about when I’m just as old as the musician.

The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said “music is the universal language of mankind,” and every day I only understand this more and more. I don’t need to understand the lyrics of “Ave Maria” to feel the same wave of emotion the song washes over other passersby — and now that melancholy tune plays over my memories of Venice. 

My mother always told me to be grateful for where I am. Though she’s correct, it’s also necessary to admire the path you took to arrive at your destination. The smells, sights and sounds that brought you to the present are equally as important as those to come — so even if I know I’ll never hear an unnamed song again, it’s still forever ingrained in my being.

Though my Italy trip concluded, the sounds of Italy and the music of the locals adorn my memories. I don’t need to know a song title to carry it with me. 

I won’t be the same person in a year. I’ll probably look back on this article and chuckle at my naivete — I still have so much to learn, yet I can’t know what until I experience it. But, I know that whoever I am in a year, whoever she is, I will still look back on previous times, listening to the soundtrack of a past life. 

“Jam Journal” is a rotating column featuring a new Daily Trojan editor in each installment commenting on the music most important to them. “Jam Journal” runs every other Thursday. Aubrie Cole is an arts & entertainment editor at the Daily Trojan.