Almost exactly ten years ago, Norton anthologies in hand, I started my first degree ----- and I moved out.*
We take it for granted nowadays, but remember? Holding the key in your hand, eyes lighting up as you walked the perimeter, sitting in the middle of an empty room and really realizing: this is your space. You go, princess: you watch TV till 4am. You negotiate the noise level with your neighbours. You organize those cereal boxes. You answer to no one.
19 and blazing: it was 2005 and I was ready to fucking dance.
So of course I went home every weekend.
AHEM AHEM a few items of backstory:
1. My family (nuclear, extended, all of it) is unequivocally perfect.
2. My childhood home, in Rigaud, is literal forested paradise. If you have visited you know what I mean.
3. In August '05, my parents had just rescued a dog we eventually named Freyja, and I really liked her. I also practiced/taught karate on Saturday mornings in the next town over from Rigaud -- so it made sense to be there on weekends,
but 4. When I moved out, I took the family PC with me.
WAIT GUYS, CAN WE DO AN EARLY-2000s PAUSE AND REMEMBER WHEN THERE WERE FAMILY COMPUTERS?! oh my god
anyway I took it with me ~~for school.
so 5. My dad got a MiniMac.
6. External hard drives weren't compatible with both PCs and Macs (are they now? who knows). There was no highspeed, either: we're talking dial. up.
7. When I went home on Friday nights, I stayed up way later than I am decade-later capable ---- but
8. there was literally. one. song. to listen to on the shiny new family MiniMac.
And it was Hollins Steele's Tongue Tied.
And I listened to that song over. and over. and over.
I get bored quickly.
You wouldn't necessarily know it to look at me: I've been at the same job for six years (but the classes change every fall); I've lived in the same city for ten (but the city changes every day). But when things stay the same too long, I get restless; frustrated. I'll change the seating arrangement in my classroom; cancel all my plans and go wandering around the city; book a flight and spend ten days alone. I'm an introvert -- my shifts often happen internally, but they're always happening.
And lemme tell you: listening to the same song for more than a week is rarely something of which I'm capable.
So what was it about this song? I mean realistically speaking I could have transferred files or downloaded something else. But I didn't. I listened to this endlessly. And I can say oh it was the lyrics or oh it was the electropop (formative, to be sure), but none of that really captures it, does it? We listen to the songs we respond to in a moment. And oh my god: my fall of 2005 is absolutely, beyond doubt, contained in Tongue Tied.
Sometimes songs inextricably wind themselves around a particular feeling I had in the moment I loved them. Not happy, or sad; not memories, or at least not exclusively -- something more experiential, less articulable, something of its own particular quality. When I listen to the old songs, I am back there. It's as if I shift into the experiential state of the person I used to be -- like my cells refigure themselves to her, and I am living through her eyes.
For a moment.
While I listen.
I found an old mix from fall 2005 the other day; put it on in my car; blared Tongue Tied when it came on. Still a Montreal resident -- but driving, out of school, a young 'professional,' older than I ever pictured myself at that age. I am nothing like what I imagined I'd be. But when this song plays, I am every version of the self I used to be.
I've been out of Rigaud for ten years now. I'm on my 6th roommate; a gem, incidentally (there were roomie-overlaps...I'm really not that horrible to live with, I promise). There have been some vibrant, explosive nights -- some of which I'm sure will be described in later entries -- and some lonely, broken ones.
They are all -- in their emotion, their history, their glory and misery -- contained in songs to come.
The video I posted is live; different from the song I know: which is, really, in keeping with all these changes. But if you'd like the exact version I listened to, ad infinitum, ten years ago: here. It's worth it.
*With endless thanks to my parents for supporting my English Lit education. <3
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