And You Run and You Run to Catch Up With the Sun

(December 12, 2004)

I'm sitting in my parents' basement, the lighting dim and peculiar - cast by the monitor, a green-shaded lamp, and the streetlights draped in fog outside - and the air slightly cold. I've got a huge stack of records next to me, queued up and ready to fill my mind with near-forgotten inspiration: Beatles, Led Zepellin, Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Joplin, Dylan, Santana...

...and, of course, Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon is trailing its way across the room, mildly staticy, unusually and irreversibly quiet, and somehow superior to the remastered digital version. I can almost imagine myself a stoned seventeen-year-old in 1974, plucking along on my guitar and letting the melodies carry me away. I love vinyl so much, possibly because it doesn't sound perfect, because these speakers could use some tweaking with a pair of pliers and the records all need to be wiped down.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking...

And then Mom wanders downstairs; she pauses at the bar separating this room into two sections and stares at me sitting on the floor, enjoying her old albums on her old stereo. And she laughs at me.

Good god, Sarah, you need to fix those speakers. You may think you're having a lo-fi 70's experience, but I can tell you that they sounded a hell of a lot better than that when I used to listen to Dark Side. Ugh. Want me to get you the pliers?

And I have to laugh along with her because I've totally been taken in by the idea of lost times and nostalgia, listening to records at an unnecessarily low quality because I figure that's how they're supposed to be.

But it's still great, and even if the experience isn't legitimate, it's delicious. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of breath, and one day closer to death...