Fleeting

I bought the Fleet Foxes record recently, and it brought back all these memories.  Of seeing them at ACL 2008...of all the feelings during that fall and winter. 

(Photos from Eric Uhlir's Flickr Photostream)

It was time of change...professional, personal, familial, Presidential, and spiritual.  They were the first band to take the stage that day...and we had to walk down early...and it was so worth it.  Magical...and haunting even years later.  Until that day, I had never heard of them...it was Wes's suggestion to go, and I'm so glad I took the advice.  There will be a new album this May...just in time for the hot summer months in Austin.  I'm hopeful, and excited...but I know that nothing will ever take the place of the music that touched me that cool September morning.

Listening to the album made me a little sad...and it brought back this recurring feeling that I sometimes have...that I'm all alone...that no matter how close I come to people that I love, I always hold back.  Things like music stand out because I'll hear an album like Fleet Foxes and I'm so emotionally connected to it...that I can't understand when it doesn't have the same affect on another person...and that can make for some lonely thoughts.

Then, I read this on an insert from the Fleet Foxes vinyl:
"This leads me to something weird about the power that music has, its transportive ability, any time I hear a song or record that meant a lot to me at certain moment or I was listening to at a distinct time, I'm instantly taken back to that place in full detail...I can ascribe exact memories to songs by the microphones...and it's a form of recall that I can actually trust.  There's no visual element to complicate things, no chance of a planted memory that wasn't actually supposed to be there and that is reassuring to me.  Maybe I should be concerned that I'm alone in almost all these memories, but I guess I was just a private kid and music was a private experience for me.  I can listen to music and instantly be anywhere that song is trying to take me.  Music activates a certain mental freedom in a way that nothing else can, and that is so empowering.  You can call it escapism if you like, but I see it as a connecting to a deeper human feeling than found in the day to day world."

This took me back...way back to 1994...and to me, sitting alone on the floor of my bedroom, sketching away on notebook paper, while Live's Throwing Copper played on repeat from the boom box my parents bought me for Christmas that year.  I don't know why I felt so alone at that time of my life.  Sure, I was 14, and a lot of it was probably due to the adolescent struggles that most teens face...but there was something else.  In some way, maybe, the music made me feel connected to something bigger than myself...to something I didn't know and didn't have to explain or measure up to...but that I could just enjoy and count on to be there when I needed it to.

And...now that I'm all grown up...maybe I'm older but not wiser.  Maybe, now I'm expecting more from the music than I used to.  Instead of a solitary escape, I now want to share the experience...but maybe that's folly.  Maybe the beauty and the intimacy that I've always found solace in...maybe I need to accept and cherish for what it is...and not try to force onto others.  Because...who would really understand?  No one better than myself...and the thoughts and feelings that I conjure up all on my own...with a little help from my musical friends.