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. This posts is a bit disjointed, but bear with me - we'll get to the good stuff soon.
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, 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 of Feel Good Lost.
Bob Boilen and his Infinite Wisdom
Bob Boilen, NPR Music host on All Song Considered and most notably recognized as the guy who started Tiny Desk Concerts, was one of my earliest music taste influencers. In one of his segments, he talked about an idea that resonated with me and gets at the heart of where this idea came from - Bob said that the music that you listened to during the years when you were "coming-of-age" - your late teens and early 20s - that is the music you will listen to for the rest of your life. You will hear and fall in love with new music all throughout your life, but I guarantee part of why you like that music is because it sounds like something you listened to during those coming-of-age years. And it makes sense. You are experiencing a lot of firsts in those years - the first time you leave your parents' house. Your first kiss. Your first meaningful relationship. Your first car and the sense of freedom that comes with that. The music that you were listening to in those moments will always be the music you love the most because of the feelings attached to them.
I won't make this entire project about those moments, those songs, and those feelings, but many of these posts will look back to those times - and times after, where lived experiences and their attachment to music changed my life.
Ennui : Chaos
Back on Alive in 85. Alive in 85 specifically makes me think about ennui. I had a period in college where everything was going seemingly to plan - I was doing well school, I was 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 understand or accept the part of me that could easily feel emotionally disregulated. That disregulation felt like chaos, and chaos was an enemy, so these feelings of ennui felt welcoming and safe.
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. Looking back now, 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 in the chaos to make something of myself.
Connection
Broken Social Scene had very few lyrics in their early works. What made their sound truly unique was its ability to evoke a sense of connection, like tuning into the frequency of the universe and every particle within it. Their songs swell toward something, or sometimes beautifully drift into nothing. It's Superconnected.
Sometimes when I'm alone in public, I sit back and 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 are they going? 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.
Does that clock on the wall get 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 not 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.