"I am in the business of making future nostalgia"
It was mid afternoon at Karl Strauss brewery on day two of my weeklong vacation when I said the best thing I've ever said while casually imbibing.
It was more a defense to why I like music, which is a pretty normal thing for someone to do. I would even say its a symptom of the human condition.
But I listen to music in a very particular way. I like to listen to whole albums straight through. They are usually only about half an hour long, after all. It really gives me a feeling for the overarcing message of an artist. Sure, a single song can be quite obvious, but a whole album tells a worldview. Its something I figured out after deciding listening to a shuffling list of my entire music collection leaves me quite empty, that listening to an album is an experience.
And more importantly, listening to a song can take me back. It takes me back to the headspace I adopted for the album, when I was knee deep trying to feel it.
It got me thinking. I don't do this just for music. Its the reason I love blogging, photography, fashion, reading the news, and generally partaking. Its why I write my 10 things lately posts. I am trying to put a stake in the ground, trying to make this time in my life more different than others so I can pick it out of a lineup.
Its for nostalgia.
Right here, right now, I am listening to everything Lana Del Rey has ever made, drifting in long hours of shapeless music and gauzy imagery wearing filmy tops in 100 degree heat. The heat is foreboding. Will California ever have water? I am reading and watching Anna Karenina over and over like it is isn't 150 years old. How much autonomy do we really have in our lives? It isn't a love story, is it.
I am on a brief summer vacation and I am realizing that life is something that happens when you aren't paying attention. I purposefully scheduled nothing to do. I can't even wait.
