Lilly

Like most people, scents are able to trigger memories for me and transport me back to certain moments and people. I have been known to hang on to certain scents long after I have realised that I can't hang on to the people they are associated with. Sometimes you forget what has been stored in the scent database and the intensity of your feelings takes you by surprise. The same holds true for music. 

On Saturday I was passing time between a breakfast date and a lunch date and idly browsing the offerings of a concept store downtown. They had Italian music on at full blast and I recognised Antonello Venditti, contributor to the soundtrack of my teenage years when I had an "Italian phase". I shazamed a certain song whose title I was not sure of and it turned out to be "Lilly". It made me think back to school trips to Italy, unrequited crushes on boys who didn't even know I existed and feeling ugly and fat even though I was neither of the two. 

I've also always loved live concerts, in particular the type where you stand in the crowd and shout all the lyrics at the top of your lungs.  On Saturday night I attended an open-air concert in Schönbrunn. I had seen the band (Bilderbuch) live before, but only know a handful of their songs and basically went because a friend initiated it and I thought the venue was original. They performed well, but it was not really "my" concert in the sense that I had associations with any of the songs. The concert before had been Herbert Grönemeyer, an artist whose new songs I am not familiar with at all, but the lyrics to his old hits all of which he played I still know by heart and which make me think back of certain times in my life.

Guess who started compiling an "Italo Hits" Playlist on Sunday...