Nostalgia in a Coffee Cup

And thou shouldst know they all have delight

as much as their own vision penetrates

The Truth, in which all intellect finds rest.

Dante, Paradiso. 

I'm sitting in my room, tealights, a vanilla and black walnut candle burning, and a stick of incense smouldering in the corner. I'm listening to Emily Barker, a delicious new musical discovery who I was introduced to by my friend Jess. Emily's folky, and somewhat whimsical style evokes in me the sense of nostalgia that has been lingering these past few days.

I think it's something to do with transition. You know that feeling you get when 'times they are a changing' (cue Bob Dylan), and it's like you're walking a knife edge between apprehensive excitement which beckons you around the bend in the road, and a wistful glance behind you as you turn the corner? I'm there. Yesterday afternoon I took myself off to one of my favourite haunts, (I won't tell you where in case one day you find me there...) and I spent the afternoon with a hot chocolate, gazing out of the window, watching the snowflakes spinning downwards, before the sky cleared to a  bright blue tinged with rose as the sun began to set. I took my notebook with me, and wrote  a while.

One of the most thought provoking things about 'Garden State' is the whole question of what it is to be unique, and the idea that in one moment you can do something which has never ever been done before - and in that moment, you are unique. To some extent this is always true, in that I will never be able to recreate anything that anyone else has done, or at least not in the exact way that they have just done it, but all the same, I love the creativity that is stimulated by that notion. I think a lot of human discontent (or at least in the West) is based around a hunger, a search for the unique. Everybody wants to be somebody different - to do or be something different to anything that has ever been before.

I know that is true for me. Much of the frustration I feel at the moment is tied up with a feeling of impetus - like there is something I have to do, but I can't do it yet. It's like when I write a poem, often I can almost sense one beginning, but not find the words to express what I am feeling for a while. Then, all of a sudden, usually in one sitting, I write, and I have a poem. And it's almost as if in the writing of it, I can suddenly put words to, and express what it is I have been feeling. Being an external processor, this is pretty normal for me... it's sometimes not until I start talking or writing that I manage to put my finger on exactly what it is I am trying to express. This can be either quite frustrating, or incredibly liberating, depending which stage in the process I am in!

What is your soundtrack to your life? At the moment? I've been toying with the idea of jotting down in my journal the songs that stick with me at a particular time, with the idea of one day compiling the soundtrack to my life (maybe not the whole thing, it may take a while). However, the more I think about it, the key moments of my life are very much tied up with songs that I know so well that just hearing the introduction takes me back to that time.

I was thinking that I might share a few over the next few posts. First one coming up now...

Hoppipolla - Sigur Ros

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EyI4p0yjDQ

I distinctly remember the day I bought this album, from Sainsbury's in Farnham (Water Lane for those who know it well), put it straight in my cd player in the car and drove home. I wound my way through The Sands, reaching the crescendo just as I was driving downhill through vivid green beech woods (like they always are at Easter time) against a moody grey sky. It was at a time when I had been going through a season of grieving, and was just beginning to feel alive again - and the life giving sap in the beech leaves, combined with the climactic swelling of the track, just made my spirits soar. This track will always remind me of that year, because the victory I heard in the melody, was almost as acute as that in my heart.

Anyway. That's the first one for now.

For now, take a look at this. I think you'll find it interesting...

http://makesmethink.com/

Until next time...