[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Although the intriguing inventions of H.G. Wells and other science-fiction writers may never come to fruition, psychologists have long discussed the true functionality of a different kind of time travel – through the senses. This week’s personal essayist, Julia Correll of Colchester, writes about the peculiar way she has found to solidify the memories we often watch drift away over time.
Time Travel
By Julia Correll, 15
[S]ome people have dreamt up ways to travel into the past or future. In movies and books, we see people using cars, phone booths, and Time-Turners, to name a few. Others are actively looking for a way even now. They appeal to science and magic in the hopes of finding a way to transport our bodies to events that took place long ago, so that we can witness (and maybe even change) the course of history.
Some people think that time travel is impossible. But I know a way – a way that is quick and accessible, ready for me almost anytime and anywhere. By accident I have discovered that the simple power of a song can catapult me into the past. I’ll be scrolling through lists of songs in search of an old favorite, and suddenly, without warning, I’m flung into the projects, the classes, the places, and the feelings of the past – as if I’ve never left those times, those places, those moments.
Freshman year. Biology, room 208. Cellular respiration and DNA replication and gametes and zygotes. My “Making of You” project. Duckweed. A love for science, a passion for the study of life and cells and tiny, tiny proteins and enzymes that know what to do – but how? Wonder at God, at the beautifully complex world he created, and gratefulness for the chance to explore it…
The summer before freshman year. My garage. The street in front of my neighbor’s hoop, the best in the neighborhood. Balancing a basketball against my hip. Getting hit in the gut with the ball when it’d bounce off the curb. Practicing, so I could amount to something that year – so I could get better, make the team, and play. Frustration when the ball wouldn’t go in. Using the drill Coach McBride taught me, so that I could have the best shot of anyone on our team…
Golf season, sophomore year. There for the ride. A little confused, a little surprised, definitely impressed. Feeling fancy wearing a skirt with my bag of clubs slung across my back and visor pulled low. Hitting the ball into the water seven times in a row during the state championship. My 8-iron. Who knew I’d be there on the putting green, competing in an actual golf tournament? It wasn’t quite real, but it was quite a bit of fun. The deep (though for me, somewhat rare) satisfaction of a good shot was a wonderful feeling, but the true joy was in spending time with the two friends who’d gotten me into the sport in the first place…
6 a.m. Frantically compiling the last pieces of much-needed evidence. Printing (or in some desperate cases, still finishing) my speeches. Flipping the pages for our manual duplex printer. Stapling. Running around in my fancy clothes and heels. Dreading the tournament but anticipating the win. Checking and double-checking that I had everything: speeches, evidence, paper, pen, extra pen, water bottle, phone. The stress before a debate tournament was worth the good ballots (and maybe even an award!) once it was done…
All of these moments are propelled into my head each time I hear a specific song. They’re an insight into my younger self, the me who loved one song at a time so much that her most prominent emotions would seep into it until it was soaked so thoroughly that its stains would bring her back, years later. These songs are a time-travel device for the mind, one that is reserved for my personal use and my personal timeline, bringing me back to moments that only I will ever be able to truly experience.
The hidden power of a formerly favorite song is far superior to any other time-travel device I know.
