Dear L,

My name is Theodose and I just became a engineer in Advanced Materials Science, even if I'm intending to continue my studies until a PhD thesis about interactions between thermonuclear plasmas and exposed matter. This added to my old always-serious sceptic habits give me the quite right appearange of an unemotional and rationalist kind of person, so it's quite odd for me to write to you. And that because of an old audio tape...

Not every tape in fact but "Pacific Blue II" (a strange but very good mix between calm instrumental music and whale sounds) that my mother bought me when I was 10, both the first New-Age album I ever had and my favorite one for long. But it "desappeared" the following year, after a 24h-long car trip to Spain during which Mom had the wrong idea to let me choose the music while limiting the number of tapes we could take...

And then, by sheer dumb luck, I find it again two days ago during my moving back to the familial appartement. Because of the strong negative memories my mother and brother still have 13 years after the last listening, I waited them to be gone out before putting the dusty tape into the player. The first track went just well even if I couldn't anticipate the following movements as my memory of the songs was really faded, but the troubles began with the second one, purely instrumental and not really sad though...

I litteraly burst into tears. It wasn't tears of joy as I could've expected, but sounded like I just lost my mother. The quick emotional changes were going up and down like waves I could fell without being able to control them. But the idea to stop the tape never came to my mind, and all I did after the song ended was to grab a tissue and dry my runny nose. The effect happened only on this track and the first time I listened it, so it's probably the main cause of this emotional outburst.

I think to be able to find a plausible explaination for HOW it happens (probably a sudden reactivation of the neuronal path concerning this tape, coming from the Wernicke area -main auditive recognition zone- to the hippocamp and amygdala -main zones for respectively the event memorization and gestion of emotions-, the whole leading to an unusually massive release of neurotransmitters like serotonin and finally to this event) but I need your help to understand WHY. Why did a single old song did trigger such a strong emotionnal response ?