In the Whale There Is a Man Without His Raincoat (Or, On Nostalgia)
Warning: Memoirish Content Ahead
In the fall of 1995 I was pretty miserable. I was out of grad school & unattached & scratching out a few bucks writing freelance for the local daily but mostly I was paying my rent by waiting tables part-time, and I was living in a house with my sister and three other women. I got along fine with my sister but basically hated two of my other roommates, and I tried to avoid the common areas of the house as much as possible. Most nights I was out, and I spent many mornings lingering over a leisurely (and cheap) breakfast at a diner a few blocks away, reading a book and sipping tea. When I was home I tended to hide out in my tiny room. In an irritating quirk of the reno-to-rent process the house had undergone, I had to pass through the main-floor bathroom anytime I wanted to enter or exit my room.
At this time for some reason I became obsessed with Brian Eno’s early solo records, the rock & roll stuff. I’d had them for years, but now suddenly I couldn’t get enough of them. Most of my vinyl copies were in storage (did I mention my room was tiny?), but I had the Another Green World LP on hand as well as a cassette dub with Warm Jets on one side and Tiger Mountain on the other.
I played the hell out of that tape. I became especially taken with the middle section of “Mother Whale Eyeless,” the part when the organ and then the female singer kick in (it’s around the 1:55 mark, for those keeping score at home). I mean, really taken. For a while I was listening only to that part of the song, which lasts a minute and a bit. I’d play it, rewind the tape for a couple seconds or so (believe me, I got good at the timing), and play it again.
It’s always fascinated me that nostalgia seems to attach to unhappy periods of my life, much more so than to happy ones. It’s always the times of everyday depression & drudgery that – once I have a few years on them – most fill me, in the remembering, with warmth & dazzled affection. Not for the person I was or anything, but for the bright spots that flashed now & then: friendship, music, etc. For the whole world that was around me when I appreciated it least. Just a fluky spark of the brain’s circuitry, I guess – but still, even though I’m not a religious person, I’d like to think there’s some kind of glimpse of transcendence in that.
Another song that was really big for me around this time was Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More.”
In the fall of 1995 I was pretty miserable. I was out of grad school & unattached & scratching out a few bucks writing freelance for the local daily but mostly I was paying my rent by waiting tables part-time, and I was living in a house with my sister and three other women. I got along fine with my sister but basically hated two of my other roommates, and I tried to avoid the common areas of the house as much as possible. Most nights I was out, and I spent many mornings lingering over a leisurely (and cheap) breakfast at a diner a few blocks away, reading a book and sipping tea. When I was home I tended to hide out in my tiny room. In an irritating quirk of the reno-to-rent process the house had undergone, I had to pass through the main-floor bathroom anytime I wanted to enter or exit my room.
At this time for some reason I became obsessed with Brian Eno’s early solo records, the rock & roll stuff. I’d had them for years, but now suddenly I couldn’t get enough of them. Most of my vinyl copies were in storage (did I mention my room was tiny?), but I had the Another Green World LP on hand as well as a cassette dub with Warm Jets on one side and Tiger Mountain on the other.
I played the hell out of that tape. I became especially taken with the middle section of “Mother Whale Eyeless,” the part when the organ and then the female singer kick in (it’s around the 1:55 mark, for those keeping score at home). I mean, really taken. For a while I was listening only to that part of the song, which lasts a minute and a bit. I’d play it, rewind the tape for a couple seconds or so (believe me, I got good at the timing), and play it again.
It’s always fascinated me that nostalgia seems to attach to unhappy periods of my life, much more so than to happy ones. It’s always the times of everyday depression & drudgery that – once I have a few years on them – most fill me, in the remembering, with warmth & dazzled affection. Not for the person I was or anything, but for the bright spots that flashed now & then: friendship, music, etc. For the whole world that was around me when I appreciated it least. Just a fluky spark of the brain’s circuitry, I guess – but still, even though I’m not a religious person, I’d like to think there’s some kind of glimpse of transcendence in that.
Another song that was really big for me around this time was Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More.”
- Brian Eno, “Mother Whale Eyeless”
(You can buy Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) here. And I promise, that’s enough about me for a while.)
posted by DW | 15.3.06
2 Comments:
Fuck, what a whiny little bitch! Hey, times are tough all over, dude. At least there was that house on Princess where you could take a break every once in a while...
Believe me, the house on Princess was one of the brightest of the aforementioned bright spots.
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