Nov 20, 2022Liked by Mills, 𝔄𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔱𝔯𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔒𝔟𝔩𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞
In 2017 I was at a hostel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, age 40. They had a little kitchen where I was having some coffee, and Harry Styles "Sign of the Times" came on the radio. I'd never heard it before, and Styles wasn't at all on my radar screen. I had to Shazam the song to see who it was, even.
Yet, something about the moment made me feel like I was 17 again. A mediocre commercial pop song captured my interest. Was it that I was at a hostel with people half my age? No - I've always hosteled abroad in private rooms.
As best I can isolate it, it is this: I was having a brand new experience in a new city in a new country. All of life was new and I was learning to navigate on my own and that made everything, including the music, however mediocre, exciting. It was a soundtrack to an adventure.
Back in the states, age 45, every day is the same. Nothing is new. All the songs sound the same, again. I can't tell one artist from the next.
But when I'm abroad? I remember songs in taxis or at warongs or played by touts in the subway. It has something to do with the excitement of everything around me being new and different and me figuring it all out on my own.
Hey, I think that's right! The last ecstatic music experience I had —I'm not sure it was 100% of the 17-year-old version, but it was a lot— was while I was traveling. I always assume that sleep schedule changes are a part of it for me: I get a little hypomanic and everything is more vivid. But this comment makes me think it's more general, and more about the newness or oldness of the world around us when we're listening, the intensity of our context as well as of our inner worlds, etc. That's awesome, thank you for sharing that!
Love the way you describe this: “Just the opposite: ecstasy is the absolute identity with the present instant, total forgetting of past and future. If we obliterate the future and the past, the present moment stands in empty space, outside life and its chronology, outside time and independent of it (this is why it can be likened to eternity, which too is the negation of time).”
Sounds like it's time for Steely Dan
It's never not time for Steely Dan.
Sitar solos are good, actually!
In 2017 I was at a hostel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, age 40. They had a little kitchen where I was having some coffee, and Harry Styles "Sign of the Times" came on the radio. I'd never heard it before, and Styles wasn't at all on my radar screen. I had to Shazam the song to see who it was, even.
Yet, something about the moment made me feel like I was 17 again. A mediocre commercial pop song captured my interest. Was it that I was at a hostel with people half my age? No - I've always hosteled abroad in private rooms.
As best I can isolate it, it is this: I was having a brand new experience in a new city in a new country. All of life was new and I was learning to navigate on my own and that made everything, including the music, however mediocre, exciting. It was a soundtrack to an adventure.
Back in the states, age 45, every day is the same. Nothing is new. All the songs sound the same, again. I can't tell one artist from the next.
But when I'm abroad? I remember songs in taxis or at warongs or played by touts in the subway. It has something to do with the excitement of everything around me being new and different and me figuring it all out on my own.
Hey, I think that's right! The last ecstatic music experience I had —I'm not sure it was 100% of the 17-year-old version, but it was a lot— was while I was traveling. I always assume that sleep schedule changes are a part of it for me: I get a little hypomanic and everything is more vivid. But this comment makes me think it's more general, and more about the newness or oldness of the world around us when we're listening, the intensity of our context as well as of our inner worlds, etc. That's awesome, thank you for sharing that!
Watching Corinna enraptured by her 1000th listen of Bananaphone today really hammered this home for me
For whatever random reason I was checking out Toto at one point and now Kizzy wants to hear “Girl Goodbye” continuously until we all die.
Sound of silver, talk to me
Makes you want to feel like a teenager
Until you remember the feelings of
A real life, emotional teenager
Then you think again
Holy shit perfect!!!
Love the way you describe this: “Just the opposite: ecstasy is the absolute identity with the present instant, total forgetting of past and future. If we obliterate the future and the past, the present moment stands in empty space, outside life and its chronology, outside time and independent of it (this is why it can be likened to eternity, which too is the negation of time).”