What Do People Remember About You?

After More Than 15 Years, I Had a Surprising Re-Encounter from My Music Days

Jul 17, 2024

Drawing of a man smiling while his eyes gaze upward. A hollow thought bubble is above his head. — Made from an image available at Clipart Library.

Early in 2023, I met a new member of a charity ministry at my parish Church. He immediately gifted me a book he wrote, and I did a double-take when I read his name. I told him I knew someone with the same name years ago who owned an audio mastering studio; hadn’t seen him since 2007.

“That’s my dad,” he replied.

I’d soon meet his parents; they had all moved into the area recently. It was an especially good reunion with his dad, who had (unbeknownst to me) closed the studio years earlier, but was happy to reminisce with someone who had such fond memories of his old business. I remember not only him, but also the chief engineer, who personally worked on my projects.

I was an indie musician back then, and I wrote and recorded some songs. Both a full-length album and a five-song EP got some radio play from regional stations that occasionally broadcast indie music.

And I’m convinced that a big part of whatever success I achieved was attributable to having the recordings mastered. The mastering engineer is usually someone not involved in the recording and production stages, so this “ultimate quality-control measure” can happen without the mastering engineer harboring any prejudices from the process.

I was fortunate to find such an excellent mastering studio that would work with an unknown indie like me!

My music business card, circa 2007. No, I don’t have the website anymore. I don’t have the MySpace profile anymore, either. Ah, MySpace … those were the days!

I told you that story so I could tell you this story!

This past Saturday — yes, the Saturday when Donald Trump was almost assassinated; I’ll have some jokes about that at the end, if everyone behaves and lets me tell my much better story first! — I was invited to the studio owner’s house for a party.

The chief mastering engineer was supposed to be there, too, and when he arrived, I recognized him immediately. He said he remembered me, too. I wondered if he was simply being polite. After all, he had hundreds, if not thousands, of clients over the many decades of his career. It would be no insult if didn’t recall someone he saw for a grand total of three workdays, the most recent of which was 17 years ago.

I recounted a funny story he had told me about the names one of his foreign clients had given to some electronic equipment. We laughed about it and then went back to mingling.

Then a little later, he approached me again and asked me about one of my songs he had mastered in 2006. And he said something that only he would’ve known, because it was an observation no one but him had ever expressed to me.

Holy crap, he really DID remember me! And my music!

If a guitar were present, I would’ve played the lick he was talking about right then and there. But even without an instrument handy, it was cool to talk about it again. And I told him that while I don’t have CDs from those old days anymore, my indie-music distributor had eventually uploaded the songs to some streaming platforms.

(Here’s the song in question — “Say Hi To Angelo’s” — at YouTube and Spotify):

Does this reconnection, connect?

Poet and speaker Maya Angelou observed:

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

I find that’s not entirely true; I have to recall some concrete facts about a person and our history, or I have no emotional recollection of the person.

My fond memories of music professionals I hadn’t seen since 2007 are more than pleasant feelings. Sure, those folks were friendly and kind, but I remember them because of real details about what they did and said. And it was their similar recall of details of our interactions that impressed me most at our reunions.

What does all this have to do with a blog on Christianity and anarchy?

Small, private, voluntary connections are little bits of anarchy. No one forces us into them. They happen because people are putting themselves out into the big world, voluntarily, and meeting others as peers in humanity. Even when engaged in commerce, the voluntary approach is the most dignified, personable one.

And if you start with this mindset, you open the door to even more positive outcomes. Genuinely good neighborliness is its own reward, but other benefits can follow; some might take decades to come to fruition, as the seeds seem to grow only memories.

But sometimes, the seeds surprise you one day. It sure happened to me!

I promised I’d get to that other Saturday thing …

I can’t really do a better job of addressing the Trump assassination attempt, than I already did during the weekly pro wrestling show a friend and I livestreamed on Sunday afternoon. Check the first few minutes of this video clip from our “Don’t Bury The Lead” podcast: