I wonder..
 

Do we ever want to distance ourselves from music we love not because we're getting tired of it, but because it's tied to a particular point in the past, and we're trying to cast off our past selves and any association with it?

yes, I do when I'm kinda gloomy, but if it's music I like I always get back to it when I'm noot in the "wrong mood".
but thinking again, it's not much a matter of my "past self", more like thigns that happened in the past. I like me/my past self, I don't feel the need to cast my past off ha ha.

I think issues such as identity construction and authenticity are too complex to be properly addressed with an answer to a question like that.

I was just talking to my mom about this the other day, because I was telling her about how I cannot stand the music that I used to like when I was 10 or 11, around 1995. It wasn't until recently that I made the connection that this was when my dad died, and even though I liked the music then, since it made me happy while I was normally down, now, that I am happy, music from that era brings back those down feelings.

I notice too that I don't want to listen to music much while I'm down. I used to think this wouldn't be the case, and I would always be looking for something good to listen to in these moods, and I could never find anything. It took a while for me to realize that silence and doing something creative, instead of trying to take in someone else's creativity, is the best remedy.

Yeah. There are certain records, that, like afterthefact, I very strongly associate with my father's death. The prime examples are probably Sgt. Pepper's and After The Goldrush, both of which I adore, but very much link in my mind to my father digging them out and handing me them, when I was 15 and first really exploring "good music". I'm not someone that really gets melodramatically upset about anything, so it's not like I can't listen to them any more. In fact, I often do. But when I put them on it's usually to really focus on them, more as a link to my father than as pieces of music. I'm sure there are happier examples of the same sort of thing, but they're not coming to mind right now.

I do the same thing, actually. The music around his death that I don't like has little to do with him, but more with that time period. They were stupid songs, and if I weren't 11 I wouldn't like them at all anyway ("Mary Moon", Del Amitri's "Roll On Me," and other crap from that time period). But it is clear to me that the reason I don't like to hear it is not simply because of it not being good music, but because of the time period it came from.

As far as music that I associate with my dad, like CCR for example, I do still listen to it it the way you mentioned EOS; I listen to it with more of intent to relate with my father more.



Jesus, where is Freud when you need him? :)

It's not really surprising to me. I mean, music is pretty one of most important things in my life, emotionally, and has been for some time. Probably the single most important thing. So it seems natural that I tie the music I love to my emotional state at that time, to a certain extent...