30 in 30: Day 10
/I'll be honest; I'm feeling a little blocked tonight, so I'm just going to get all meta in this post. I've been thinking about the following: Do I keep using this space for first-person navel gazing, or should I try to attempt to break out of talking about myself in the coming 20 days? Should I work dashed-off pieces of fiction and abstraction into the mix? If I mention people I know, should I come up with decent aliases? (Let's just say I have a lot of friends with interesting names).
You know how sometimes a specific piece of music takes you back to a specific time and place? I actually remember feeling that with a particular episode of Saturday Night Live a while back. It was a show that aired years before I started watching the show myself, but when I put on a VHS recording of a cable rerun of the Bruce Willis / Neil Young show (originally aired September 1989), it brought me back to Miramichi, NB, spring 2000, and everything I felt around that time seemed to be embedded into the experience of watching Neil Young do takes of "Rockin' In The Free World", "The Needle and the Damage Done", and "No More" that made the album counterparts seem a little too polished and clean. I remember that was a difficult winter and spring, but that particular year brought me to a lot of the people I've been fortunate to remain friends with for over 15 years. For someone who moved around quite a bit when growing up, it stuns me that these people have been a part of my life for almost half of it.
I don't know if music (or other media) has the same power to root itself to specific memories in the last 10 years, though, which is the length of time I've been out of university. I also ended up buying too much music in that period of time before I move to Halifax three years ago, so that may have something to do with it. It still happens, though; the last year is going to be tied to these specific songs (links below take you to Spotify, except for the last one):
- "Coming In On Time" - John Martyn
- "You Are Beautiful" - Chic
- "In The Gold Dust Rush" - Cocteau Twins
- "Bad Man's Song" - Tears For Fears
- "Voyager" - Daft Punk
- "Hot Knife" - Fiona Apple
- "Casualties of Glass" - Martha & The Muffins
- "The Wire" - HAIM
- "Methods of Dance" - Japan
- "She's Not Me" -Jenny Lewis
- "Higgs Boson Blues" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
- "Ada" - The National
- hell, anything by The National (particular the SNL version of "Graceless")
Do any of these songs evoke anything for any of you? Is there a common thread, atmosphere or mood that holds this list together? I know this is a bit of a fish for comments, but I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.
Hell, I managed to work through this block after all.