I was told the music/melody remains in the memory till the last through the senile process including senile dementia! Indeed, one of our seniors who was dispositioned to the nursing home for rapidly deteriorating dementia sang an old Japanese military song loudly but missing not a single tone or lyric to surprise the family. I heard a similar story many times to have made me so sad.

I don’t know how much reliable this lament on the memories would be but I certainly feel the same way these days with remarkably intact(?) memory on the music/melodies I acquainted in my young days despite my own deteriorating mental function as 81 years plus old man.

And I had one surprising event lately to dig out one old memory, totally lost(?)/embedded in my subconscious level for over 60 years, together with the melody and its background (how I get it!) through my high school chum in Seoul who gave me an unexpected call last week – he called me to inform his daughter and her family would move to our vicinity to Northern Virginia -.

Since I made a surprise/unscheduled visit to Seoul last October on way back home from my annual visit to Beijing and joined to the sentimental journey organized by our high school chums to stay overnight at Haewoondae/Busan together, we were pretty much updated on the status of our buddies – out of thirteen boys, eight remains so far!-. But, then, we couldn’t catch up enough all those sagas through years by one overnight trip so that we left many, hoping we would get together again to continue.

So, we were naturally caught up with old memories over the phone we didn’t refresh through my last visit to Korea and while we were talking about the disposition of the LP/music collection (I still keep near 3,000 discs at home) we both started in our high school days almost at the same time (I vividly remember we listened together all day his first LP- Bizet’s CARMEN- he bought from 백조사 in 명동 till late evening and so fascinated to become euphoric!), he suddenly asked me “ what happened with that famous LP you literally snatched from one 다방 in 청주 while we were visiting our buddy, 송영필? Do you still keep it? Remember the 레지 of that 다방 almost cried when you forcefully took it with you?". Indeed, on the first listening, I fell in love with such sad/melancholic melody instantly and felt I got to have it to listen around the clock and begged to the owner to let me take to home to listen forever and of course, I paid at least 10 times more than the actual price to surprise many.

When he asked me about some music disc I snatched from 다방 in 청주, in the middle of nowhere, my brain couldn't kick in immediately though I vaguely recalled this unusual incidence and didn’t ring clearly till I listened to the melody, Blue Canary, he kindly sent me through the email;

Dinah Shore, Blue Canary (1953)  https://youtu.be/2PJ6wd2qTP4;   https://youtu.be/oNs609vNHsU

Suddenly, all the memories flooded back to my brain including the 다방 as well as the 레지 who missed this disc so dearly, like old movie scenes but strangely my tears started to well up uncontrollably while listening to the melody to make me feel so embarrassed! Oh, yes, oh, yes, how could I forget!  And the melody remained to ring my ear all these days. Memory, memory, gone forever?

Melancholily

BB Lee