So I found this to be a fascinating moment: I knew the song through a meme, and not on its own merits. And in fact had no association at all with the original artist, as the song to me just evokes a slowly moving car down a street in suburban Portland.
“Anger, he smiles towering
In shiny metallic purple armor
Queen Jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown
Sneers at the grassy ground”
“Did you lose your mind all of a sudden, or was it a slow, gradual process?”
“Sir, the truth is, I talk to God all the time, and, no offense, but He never mentioned you.”
A little nostalgia, I think. Hearing it definitely reminds me of Chicago at the turn of the millenium.
“I went to the doctor, guess what he told me
Guess what he told me
He said, ‘Girl you better try to have fun, no matter what you do’
But he’s a fool”
Anymore, I can’t differentiate between the name of new sodas and the name of popular bands. Seeing this made me wonder how much certain foods/brands that I loved as a child may have changed, without my knowing, over the years.
At work, a group of us are using Music League to create weekly, collaborative playlists, built around various themes. The most recent theme was titled “We’ve Since Broken Up, But I Still Love This Song,” and my submission for it was Billy Bragg’s “The Only One.”
It’s pretentious at times. But I still have a fond memory of it. I don’t know whether this qualifies as an art film or not, but it’s definitely not your typical film.
The thing that I remember most fondly is that there were a few moments – a few select segments/scenes… that caught me off guard, and made me rethink how I listened to the world. One of those moments from the film was called “Truck Stop”:
It’s odd to think of Proenneke now, more than a year into the Coronavirus pandemic. Many of us have remained inside our homes, not able to go outside or be around people. And contrasting that with being wholly in the wilds of Alaska, more or less outside all the time – able to go absolutely anywhere at all, but there being no one else around.
“Hedda Sharapan, one of the staff members at Fred Rogers’s production company, Family Communications, Inc., recalls Rogers once halted taping of a show when a cast member told the puppet Henrietta Pussycat not to cry; he interrupted shooting to make it clear that his show would never suggest to children that they not cry.”
I fell down a rabbit hole today, watching a ton of videos by The Hood Internet. Their project, ’79 – ’99, is just phenomenal and a ton of nostalgia and fun and good feelings, all rolled up.
I had this strange ritual when I was an undergraduate. Well, I had several, but the one I’m talking about was what I did early in the mornings, before I went to my job at the Monroe County Public Library.
There’s a distinct feeling of nostalgia I feel, listening to this album again. It’s also fitting that the days are shorter, and dusk arrives a little faster – as this album makes me think a lot about late fall.
“Negative emotions are various but they are similar in one dimension, which is it hurts and leads people to react, to amend, to try to counter the negative feelings. One possible way to recover – or to generate positive utility – is to seek nostalgia that reminds people of the good old days.”