time lost

if nostalgia is the experience of concentrated regret for lost time, as i wrote previously, then cosmic irony is the experience of feeling sore from being victimized or mocked by the world and circumstances.

as i was up late musing about time, i failed to realize that today was the beginning of daylight savings time, which meant i lost an hour. what turned out to be an already late morning turned into an early afternoon. curses! just as the mornings were beginning to look so beautiful.

i am doomed to be perpetually maladjusted.

i'm listening to Band of Horses' first album on repeat. the songs always make me think of sophomore year in college, springtime, and my room in Peabody, lying on my back on a carpeted floor with friends, and late nights that turn to early mornings. Oxford is really bewitching in the early hours just before sunrise. i'd like to go back there, but being back physically wouldn't be enough. it'd have to be a metaphysical transportation. a time machine would have to be involved. oh well. for now, listening to Band of Horses is enough.

this album also makes me think of the summer i spent in chicago. i listened to the songs "St. Augustine" and "Monsters" every night before going to sleep. i still sometimes do. i listened to it then for the same reason i do now, to quiet homesickness and have something familiar.

certain albums have a way of shaping and preserving our experiences. i think this phenomenon is unique to our digital media generation; we have had the luxury of constant play, constant access, and ease of repeat. we are self-sufficient in building our own soundtracks.

i think an important skill to have as an adult is the ability to create yr own atmospheres. when we are children, our parents do this for us. they wrap us up in nurseries and warmth for our protection, but when we get older and see the world in all its unsafe honesty, we have to design these atmospheres ourselves. candles, pillows, bottled water, heavily laden bookshelves of poetry and fiction, these are some of the devices that come most readily to my mind.

and familiar, comforting music, of course.



-stephan!e