Just like a pill

There are songs that are known to everyone, songs where most of the time we can’t even name the singer or band who sung it, and yet could sing the song – or at least the chorus – without thinking about it. And there are those songs that have a special importance to us. Songs that we know by heart, songs that are burned deep into our mind and connected so strongly to a memory we can’t possibly ignore them. These songs exist for us personally or even for a whole group or society. Everybody connects Enya’s Only Time to 9/11.

One of these songs that is strongly connected to a memory of mine is Just like a pill by Pink. Honestly, I don’t even know why. But everytime I hear the song, a memory comes back to my mind, of which I couldn’t even tell the year it happened if it wasn’t by the date that the song was released. It was one of those evenings at the funfair. Paul had just won some more tickets at that basketball game, got himself a bottle of cheap champagne and we – Paul, Gilles and I – left the fair. We sat in front of a tourist office emptying that bottle, and at some point came onto speaking about Pink’s then newly released song Just like a pill. I don’t know why that memory got so important to me, or so strongly connected to that song, but it did.

Peradventure, it is only because back then in 2002, life was a lot simpler. I still had all of the chances that I’ve missed by now. The future looked bright and I still had the possibility to realize the dreams that today are nothing more than a memory about which I don’t want to think because they sadden me. That memory, some sort of personification for a luckier life? Mayhap.

Now, three years later I heard that song again coincidentally. It’s been the first time since months. And still I felt like Proust dipping his madeleine into his coffee and, without being able to explain it, found back the lost time for a single moment.