Music Memories

I feel a bit ashamed that my responses on this topic will seem generic, so I can't really offer specific excerpts for tracks, as it speaks more about types of situations than the situations themselves. Alas, here they are.

I play quite a bit of video games, and when I get to a big event, such as a turning point or climax in the plot, or That One Boss, or just getting some necessary closure for something I've just been itching in the finish (though usually the first two), whatever track that will be playing at that moment will be imprinted into my memory - especially if I've heard it for the first time - as being associated with that moment or boss. This tends to be a lot more apparent with specific tracks that you only hear once or twice in the entire game.

As far as real life goes there are a few moments like this, but not nearly as many. Usually when some event is going on, I will only associate a musical piece with it if it happens to be playing on some device at the time (such as my personal playlist, or maybe the radio). Unfortunately, since I tend to have a propensity to recall negative moments with more clarity than positive ones, I try not to focus on those negative moments so I can forget that awful moment and thus detach the music from the memory. This has been successful...for the most part. It's never the fault of the song itself, however. It just happened to be playing at the time I was going through a rough patch or a deep funk or a saddening trial.