The glass is cold against my face, Cambridge station slips away along the shuddering tracks, and the countryside opens before me. I am 25 years old. There is a toddler screaming across the aisle, two teenagers listening to TikTok on their phones behind me, the ticket inspector making methodical progress up the carriage. The final notes of a song trickle away, and the familiar twang of Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Cornerstone’ starts to play.

I am 22 years old. The glass of the bus window is cold against my face, the 176 Tottenham Court Road to Penge stops outside the McDonalds in Camberwell. The fabric of the seat is cold and worn, I haven’t eaten dinner. I have just experienced heartbreak for the first time in my life.

The ticket inspector is hovering above my seat. QR code scanned, pleasantries exchanged. Now, ‘Pictures of You’ by The Cure. I am 13 years old. My head is lolling against the window in the back seat of my dad’s car and through the open slit of my eyes I can see the spire of my hometown’s cathedral, careening over the hill.

“A weary traveller walking freely through the doors of my own past”

All these vignettes beg the question: what does it mean to soundtrack your life? What I am talking about here is music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs), the widely researched phenomenon of personal and past events triggered by musical stimuli. These triggers are often involuntary and primarily positive, producing intense and nostalgic recollections of people, places, events and time periods. Personally, I am a MEAM enthusiast. On a recent road trip with a friend from my undergrad, he told me that out of everyone he knew, I was the person who most passionately connected their life to music. Recalling the early years of our friendship, listening to music from tinny old speakers in dirty communal kitchens, I could see what he meant. In fact, for as long as I can remember, I have been embroiled so deeply inside my own musical fascinations that I have managed to construct a soundtrack which covers almost every moment of my life. Like the evocation of most memories, these are rarely chronological. I am 25 and 11 and 15 and 23, one song dancing to the next, a weary traveller walking freely through the doors of my own past.

“It’s strange, because a moment later I am walking along Exeter Quay, 20 again”

‘Will We Talk? ’ by Sam Fender brings me back to a set of swings by my first-year halls. I am a little wild and rough and 18. It’s my first time away from home. All my friends are new. Confused, we stumble through the markers of adulthood even though we are still children. The Zolas’ ‘Ancient Mars’ is an ode to 16 year-old wanderings through dusty book shops, dreaming of leaving home and exploring the world beyond my doorstep. The song changes to ‘White Winter Hymnal’ by Fleet Foxes, and I am back in my hometown after leaving London, sat in the car in an industrial estate, backseat full of metal fixtures for my job in retail, seven years and the span of a song away from all the dreams of my teenage self. Then, I am sat in Stockholm Arlanda, a delayed connecting flight to Trondheim, ‘My Kind of Woman’ by Mac DeMarco on repeat in my headphones, sinking into the seat under the weight of my first term in Cambridge. It’s strange, because a moment later I am walking along Exeter Quay, 20 again, listening to The Lumineers’ ‘My Eyes’, and the sun is setting over the rippling water, and the seagulls are calling out my name.

“Dare I say I’ve outdone the physicists?”

Sometimes, time is fluid and ambiguous, and I can only see a place. The light filtering through the trees in the New Forest, moss creeping into the sides of the road, opening into the great, pale valley, the dry bracken and rich ferns. ‘One’ by U2 is playing through the car radio. Or, I see the stretch of pathway from my secondary school to my housing estate, a rickety bridge over a shallow river, and I can hear The Killers’ ‘A Dustland Fairytale’.

Some of these songs are deeply personal. They evoke memories that are individual and unwitnessed. Others are shared, they are vehicles for connection and nostalgia, relics of long-lived friendships or lost loves. Now, Noah Kahan’s ‘Doors’, from the recently released The Great Divide starts to play. I’m back on the train out of Cambridge, the toddler has stopped screaming, the teenagers have put their headphones in, and the ticket inspector is long gone from our carriage. In five years, this song will bring me back right here. I’ll be 30 and 25 and 15 and seven, and the witness to my life will be music. Dare I say I’ve outdone the physicists? If you want the secret to time travel, soundtrack your life.