Pent-up Mental Journey.
I had to run some errands this morning: mailed some bills, filled a prescription (remember to pick it up on the way home from work) and picked up some blank videotapes to tape Sesame Street for veek. Since I was near the local Wherehouse, I figured I'd buy the tapes there. Since I was buying blank tapes at the Wherehouse, I figured I'd scan through the used CD collection. Since they were cheap, I figured I'd pick up Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five and Born on a Pirate Ship by the Barenaked Ladies. These were both albums that I listened to quite a lot during my first two years of college in D.C., although I had never owned a copy of either. When I got home, I set Whatever playing on the stereo and lay down to rest, reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
Whatever is a great album--great in a way that, I believe, only an album that one hears during the first two years of college can be. Lying drowsily in my bed, I was pulled back by the music to the days when I lived so many miles from home. The light was different; the smell was different; the air was different. When one sleeps in an unusual place or a hotel room, it is possible, when falling asleep or waking up, to believe that one is in one's own bed, and beyond closed eyelids, the shape of one's familiar room begins to arrange itself. Listening to the sorrow of "Brick," "Selfless, Cold and Composed" and other songs, with my attention already split between the book in front of my closing eyes and the dreams waiting to burst forth, I began to feel the emotional layout of my GW dorm room reassemble. The sagas of girlfriends, the stress of performance, the extreme unhappiness with where I was living, the sense of revulsion regarding how my dorm room looked, all of it settled on my unmoving form like a heavy, familiar down comforter. In "Brick," two kids try to solve their problems on their own. And it reminds me of a time when I felt it was very important to handle things on my own. The only thing I really accomplished was my own isolation. That isolation was what I felt again wrapping all around me.
Then the phone rang, and when I threw my blanket off of me to reach the phone, the emotions were gone again as well. And I looked at my room, which is still pretty messy, and wasn't bugged by it; and I felt a light chill of spring that was still around the house, and I felt very much alive.
I screened the call. It was a man who seemed disturbingly happy to inform me that I was preapproved for a cellular phone. I returned to my bed, drew my blanket and my memories around me again and soon I was asleep.
Whatever is a great album--great in a way that, I believe, only an album that one hears during the first two years of college can be. Lying drowsily in my bed, I was pulled back by the music to the days when I lived so many miles from home. The light was different; the smell was different; the air was different. When one sleeps in an unusual place or a hotel room, it is possible, when falling asleep or waking up, to believe that one is in one's own bed, and beyond closed eyelids, the shape of one's familiar room begins to arrange itself. Listening to the sorrow of "Brick," "Selfless, Cold and Composed" and other songs, with my attention already split between the book in front of my closing eyes and the dreams waiting to burst forth, I began to feel the emotional layout of my GW dorm room reassemble. The sagas of girlfriends, the stress of performance, the extreme unhappiness with where I was living, the sense of revulsion regarding how my dorm room looked, all of it settled on my unmoving form like a heavy, familiar down comforter. In "Brick," two kids try to solve their problems on their own. And it reminds me of a time when I felt it was very important to handle things on my own. The only thing I really accomplished was my own isolation. That isolation was what I felt again wrapping all around me.
Then the phone rang, and when I threw my blanket off of me to reach the phone, the emotions were gone again as well. And I looked at my room, which is still pretty messy, and wasn't bugged by it; and I felt a light chill of spring that was still around the house, and I felt very much alive.
I screened the call. It was a man who seemed disturbingly happy to inform me that I was preapproved for a cellular phone. I returned to my bed, drew my blanket and my memories around me again and soon I was asleep.