Argument
Only when I felt lost in my life did I try to record and savor moments that happened every day, but here’s one exception. Music tracks catch a person’s attention even while they are engaging with their life, and, serendipitously, become fragments of my vanishing time even without their notice. When I compose my own music, it then becomes the key to retrieve the memories, and that makes my life meaningful.
Annotated Bibliography
Janata, Petr, Stefan T. Tomic, and Sonja K. Rakowski. “Characterisation of Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories.” Memory 15.8 (2007): 845-860.
This article literally demonstrates the Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories (MEAMs) by experimenting with 329 UCD students with 1515 pop music tracks that were popular during their teenage years. The result is that 30% of the tracks successfully evoked one of 3 different memories (lifetime period, general events, or event-specific knowledge) with a strong association with positive emotions. I want to use this article directly since it necessarily supports a large part of my argument, and a psychological experiment is a credible procedure to support the scientific aspect of this philosophical idea as well. This source was published on Memory, which gives high credibility in the psychology subject. There are several limitations as well. E.g., this study only reflects a certain group of students in a certain area and from the same era. Most of the students are from the 1990s, and they are mostly Americans who listen to pop music. I was born in 2008, so the time was different, and the genres I compose are highly different from them. The largest concept that this article differs from my main point is that Janata only measures how large the change in their emotion was and how their memory was retrieved. There still need a logic chain to connect from this psychological theory to my philosophical point, which is that memory retrieval generates meaning in general.
Eagleton, Terry. The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Eagleton argues that the meaning of life can be categorized into different concepts. He specifically used jazz improvisation as an example of reciprocal flourishing, in which people benefit others, but with only self-interested motivation. This is an incredibly reliable source that includes a comprehensive view of the meaning of life across different disciplines. The jazz group is a good example to support my argument because it precisely explained how improvisation works and interacts with the meaning of life. One limitation would be that it mainly talked about reciprocal flourishing, which means that the philosophical core of my argument was still unproven. This source is obviously credible since it is from a publication of Oxford University, which has a high prestige all around the world.
My argument is basically about a contradiction, while composing the motivation of composing music is not for discovering the meaning of life, but it unintentionally recorded my time and ultimately did that through an indirect process. This chapter suggests that the meaning of life can be pointless while it aims for the intrinsic value itself, and this partially supports my idea.
“What we need is a form of life which is completely pointless, just as the jazz performance is pointless. Rather than serve some utilitarian purpose or earnest metaphysical end, it is a delight in itself. It needs no justification beyond its own existence. In this sense, the meaning of life is interestingly close to meaninglessness” (Eagleton 100).
Sedikides, Constantine, Joost Leunissen, and Tim Wildschut. “The Psychological Benefits of Music-Evoked Nostalgia.” Psychology of Music 50.6 (2022): 2044-2062.
This article summarizes the existing research on music-evoked nostalgia and its multi-aspect psychological facts of my argument. The authors argue that music-evoked nostalgia confers benefits in the social domain by fostering social connectedness, the self-oriented domain by raising self-esteem and instilling a sense of youthfulness, and the existential domain by strengthening meaning in life and augmenting self-continuity. I want to use this article directly since it provides the exact logic chain that I mentioned was missing in the Janata source, which is the connection between music-triggered memory retrieval and the generation of life meaning. The authors also explain that nostalgia evoked by music makes people feel that life is worth living, which is a direct indicator of meaning in life. This source was published in Psychology of Music, which is a well-known journal in music psychology, and Sedikides himself is a frontier researchers in this area, so the credibility is high.
However, this article only focuses on nostalgic music and its listening effect, which is similar to Janata’s, in that it does not specifically mention the perspective of composers. Another limitation is that the article is a narrative review rather than an original study, so the conclusions are derived from synthesizing other studies rather than collecting new data. Nevertheless, it still proved the essential idea I needed between memory retrieval and life meaning.
McAdams, Dan P., and Kate C. McLean. “Narrative Identity.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 22.3 (2013): 233-238.
This article introduces the concept of narrative identity, which McAdams defines as a person’s internalized and evolving life story that integrates the reconstructed past and the imagined future to provide life with some degree of unity and purpose. The authors review recent studies on narrative identity in two main areas, which are psychological adaptation and development, and they explain that narrators who find redemptive meanings in suffering and adversity, and who construct life stories that feature themes of personal agency and exploration, tend to enjoy higher levels of mental health, well-being, and maturity. This source was published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, which is a highly valuable journal, so the credibility is very high.
It provides the fundamental psychological mechanism that explains why retrieving memory fragments through music can generate life meaning, which is exactly the philosophical claim I make in my argument. The article also introduces the concept of self-defining memories, which are the specific autobiographical instances that hold particular importance in shaping who we are, and this concept aligns precisely with the time fragments idea in my argument. But this article does not specifically discuss music as a medium for memory retrieval, so I have to combine it with the music psychology sources to make the connection complete. Moreover, the narrative theory mostly assumes language-based storytelling, while my argument suggests something else that music can serve a similar narrative function instead of words.
Eno, Brian. A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Print.
The book is divided into two sections. The first part is a diary covering the year 1995; the second part, the ‘swollen appendices’ of the title, is a collection of essays, short stories, and correspondence. Eno is the inventor of ambient music and one of the most influential producers in modern music history, and the book gives a first-person view of how a composer experiences things mentioned in previous sources.
Since it provides the creator’s first-person perspective, which all my other sources are missing, and a personal diary from a recognized composer is a credible way to support the experiential aspect of my argument, this is a perfect source to fill the last gap from a listener to a producer. Eno reflects that the act of writing things down takes it out of the mind, where it’s possible to think about it differently, which directly connects to the idea in my argument that composing music works as the key to retrieving moments. The diary itself also demonstrates the ambiguity of my argument, which is that Eno did not start writing the diary to record meaning, but the diary unintentionally became a meaningful archive of that period of his life. This source is credible because Eno is a well-known artist whose work is in ambient music, and the book is published by Faber and Faber, which is a well-documented publisher. The only limitation would be that this was not reviewed and verified, so it is only a person’s POV. This might differ for different groups of people. Eno’s perspective is from a specific genre and generation that differs from mine, since he works primarily in ambient music. The main point, the lived experience of a composer who treats creation as both an unintended record of time and a key to retrieve it later, fits my argument well.