What is it about nostalgia that turns people on? Do you need to be a nostalgic person to find meaning in your past? I never understood people who were unable to draw some value from the places they have been. Maybe there are just some people who never admit it. There seems to be a certain sexiness to "living in the moment" and not being caught up in the past or the future. I would say that I am present with other people, but left to my own devices I spend a good portion of time reminiscing.I would suppose that for most people who feel a sense of connection to events in their past they have certain touchstones that invoke feelings and memories. My gateway into these happenings is music. When I phase into new artists and albums I haven't heard, it seems like I am focused on forging ahead. When I dig through the library of my past, it isn't normally just to hear a tune I can't get out of my head.
People and places are trapped inside songs from a specific era in my life. When I listen to Liz Phair, I'm not just listening to "Whip Smart" because I enjoy it. Well, I do enjoy it, but I'm in my basement room at 1113 South Joliet Avenue in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I have long hair, I'm skinny, awkward and meeting new high school people who came from other middle schools. I'm meeting people I'm still friends with now, but I see them in the context of the time when sitting down with Liz. I'm in Sarah Keyman's basement, hanging out with Brienne and Kari, two people I'm still "friends" with. One more so than the other, but that isn't the point. The point is I can't just listen to this album and be detached, it has too much meaning. The music reminds me of the sounds and even the smells of the house 15 years later.
Five years ago I set out to make a compilation of music. I wanted to start it at a major fork in the road of my life. When I met the first girl I think I ever really loved, or at least took the time to try, and the splintering of my parents' marriage. Sort of the end of my "age of innocence." I figured it was significant at the time, but just never really knew why. Raging emotions, loss and discovery are major components of any teenagers life. My emotions were accelerated by the loss of trust in the failed marriage of my parents, and trying to recapture it in the powder keg of a teenage relationship. Maybe I'm too self-absorbed, and no one else looks at life like this with intense reflection and philosophical thought, but for me it is inescapable.
I don't have albums in my closet (literally), I have access to a time machine and to all the events in my life. Over Christmas break, along with cleaning and hanging drywall in our basement, I am going through all my old music and compiling them by these things which took place. I'm not sure why, but something happened with me over the past few months. I'm not sure what. Is it my quickly approaching 30th birthday? Is it because within X amount of years I'll be a father? I don't know. Somehow I doubt it. I don't fear either milestones. I think it is merely a coincidence, although my sister and her years of scholastic work would probably say otherwise...
I can't help but imagine a person who is into their life as much as I am would do it for any other reason than some self-gratifying and self-aggrandizing purpose. I feel the need to catalog my life, and I do it according to music. I'll let you know how it turns out.
