Monthly Archives: September 2003

Spiral

A few fac­tors have helped make things eas­i­er in the last lit­tle while, but per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant is the real­iza­tion that almost noth­ing around me has changed. That all cere­bral influ­ences have remained fair­ly sta­t­ic in activ­i­ty.

And I think to myself, “How could I have been so stu­pid? How did I not come to this real­iza­tion soon­er?”

And hav­ing lived a lit­tle more, loved a lot more, every­thing seems brighter.

BT On Campus

I was walk­ing back through the cam­pus today, a crush of stu­dents milling around me, while lis­ten­ing to the new Billy Talent. Ben Kowalewicz’s shrill vocals matched every­thing I saw, from the arro­gant walk of that perky girl to the indif­fer­ent look on the face of that Chinese guy.

I’m sink­ing, I’m twist­ed
I’m broke and you can’t fix it
Don’t make me, cause I’ll do it
Red blood and then we’ll all go

I wished, if only for a moment, that I could pump this music through the crowds, to make every­one lis­ten and move with me.

The Nature Of It All

I have to get this down before I lose it.

The new Starsailor album is out this month, and I’m not sure if I’ll buy it. There’s some­thing about the gen­er­al sound of Starsailor songs that evoke an almost inef­fa­ble emo­tion in me. I nev­er even knew they exist­ed until last month, but for some rea­son, their 2001 Love Is Here album cov­er is odd­ly famil­iar. Every time I see the sun-washed tracks falling into the hori­zon, I get an odd sense of déjá vu.

As one who rarely has such an ephemer­al, mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, this strikes me as a extreme­ly poignant thing. I feel as if I know this album, that I’ve seen it before, even had emo­tions asso­ci­at­ed with it. It’s some­thing I can’t explain, and whether the emo­tions are good are bad, I can’t recall.

Their music moves me nonethe­less. The chord pro­gres­sions are unpre­dictable yet dul­cet, bit­ter yet sweet. I can’t decide if it’s sun­set or sun­rise music, and the album cov­er serves to empha­size this equiv­o­cal­i­ty. I can’t even tell if the music makes me hap­py or sad.

And so remains my prob­lem. Do I want to lis­ten to this music or not? I always find it odd that some­one would not want to think about or expe­ri­ence some­thing sim­ply because it makes them sad. Doing so seems to be so cow­ard­ly, as if one is run­ning from one’s self.

Yet the prob­lem remains, with oth­er music as well, and as clear as this log­ic is for me I find it dif­fi­cult to queue up cer­tain songs. Listening to The Postal Service brings back so many amaz­ing, unfor­get­table mem­o­ries, but so many painful thoughts as well.

I choose not to ignore either, and end up being emo­tion­al­ly torn, unclear in my heart and in my mind.

Catching Up With Jono, And LAN Delay

I had the chance to see Jono yes­ter­day, and after a two year hia­tus we were able to catch up with each oth­ers lives. He’s lost many of the inter­ests that we once shared, but retained many of the Jonathanesque qual­i­ties that he’s known for. The most sur­pris­ing thing to find out was his mar­riage plan for next year, the first one of my friends to announce the “Big Day”.

As for today, the LAN par­ty was delayed until next week, and I opt­ed to can­cel on the nurs­ing par­ty hap­pen­ing two floors below for a relax­ing night in with Jack, Ginger, and Mary Jane. In the morn­ing, major plans include doing a bit of job research for a poten­tial client whom I met with on Friday, and fin­ish­ing the sec­ond island in Myst III: Exile with Trolley.