Alive in 85 89
I guess I should take a minute to explain myself. Namely, the name. Alive in 89 was inspired by Alive in 85, a song off of Broken Social Scene's first album Feel Good Lost. This band and this track harken a few emotions that get at the heart of what I want to do with all of this.
Frisson
Frisson (per Wikipedia): Frisson (UK: /ˈfriːsɒn/ FREE-son, US: /friːˈsoʊn/ free-SOHN[1][2] French: [fʁisɔ̃]; French for "shiver"), also known as aesthetic chills or psychogenic shivers, is a psychophysiological response to rewarding stimuli (including music, films, stories, people, photos, and rituals[3]) that often induces a pleasurable or otherwise positively-valenced affective state and transient paresthesia (skin tingling or chills), sometimes along with piloerection (goose bumps) and mydriasis (pupil dilation).[4][5][6][7] The sensation can occur as a mildly to moderately pleasurable emotional response to music with skin tingling.[4]
A lot of music gives me frisson. 2001-2005 Broken Social Scene gives me the most frisson. Having listened to this band for 20 years now, I'm not sure if it's the nostalgia, the time and place where I was in life when this band found my ears, the fact that they just seem to have all of the right resonating ingredients, or if it's something else. I do know that some 20 years later, I still feel the full body chills and a complete sense of bliss when I start track 1.
Beginnings
This was Broken Social Scene's first album. Their subsequent albums are what gave them the most fame (9.2 on Pitchfork in 2003 will do that for you), and launched the careers of artists like Metric, Feist, Stars, and a host of other indie darlings. There's something about starting something new with zero expectations in an attempt to create something that's different than what's out there that acts as a creation of your expression (not the other way around).
Ennui : Chaos
Alive in 85 specifically makes me think about ennui. I had a period in college where everything was going seemingly to plan - I was crushing school, I was actually healthy enough to have a track season, I was balanced in work : play. This perfect little life made me feel bored, and I was completely okay with it. At the time, I didn't recognize my tendencies towards emotional disregulation. To me, chaos was an enemy, and these feelings of ennui felt welcoming and safe.
There's a different form of ennui that's not despairing, though. There's a gentle kind. The kind that gives your mind room to breathe. I didn't crave it because it made me feel alive. It made me feel blank, and that felt like a small act of mercy in between the moments of chaos I often felt as a sensitive teenager.
ennui ←---→ chaos
Ennui and chaos live on opposite ends of a binary spectrum. I don’t view anything as living fully at one end of this spectrum. Nothing is pure ennui, nothing is pure chaos. Everything exists somewhere in between - sliding, shifting, reacting. Even Alive in 85 isn't only stillness. There's movement in it, but it’s slow and dissolving. Like watching light fade from a wall. Maybe it wasn't ennui I was feeling all along, but the stillness in finding a place to rest on this spectrum that let me be both at peace and able to catalyze and make something of myself.
Connection
Broken Social Scene has very few lyrics in their early works. But what is so incredibly unique about them is how they created a sound that makes people feel a connection with the universe and every single particle in it. It's electric. It's digital. It foretold the struggles of connection in the world we are living in now, but suggests overcoming it by coexisting.
The coexistence I'm talking about is the feeling I get when I'm sitting alone in public and I start to watch the world pass me by - not in the metaphorical sense - I mean really watch the world pass me by.
I start to wonder what everyone else around me is doing. Where did they come from? What's on their mind?
What sort of thought went into the choice of the table I'm sitting at, and why is that light bulb burned out? I wonder if they know. If they care. I'm sure someone cares.
I wonder if that clock on the wall gets lonely at night? Or maybe it's just happy to have some time to itself. I wonder if it wishes it could leave that wall on its own volition or if it's just happy it doesn't have to have the stress and worry that every person who gazes at it feels? That they're running out of time. That they're going to be late. That everything is finite. Is there such a thing as free will? Perhaps not, but I like to think about the chance that there is.