I had a love that I didn’t know was a love until after the love was gone from my life. I feel comfort in knowing that I realized too late, because I know it would have exploded and atomized into a billion pieces. I also feel deep regret in not letting myself open up to the inkling I had all along, in not letting myself acknowledge that it was indeed a love. The truth is, I was stunned by it—it took me by surprise and so because it did not fit the shape of recognizable love, I quieted it as much as possible. But it was bright. So bright that unfortunately it invades my mind occasionally, sometimes more than occasionally, and I wonder what the statute of limitations is on longing.
It feels absurd in a humiliating way that this is what came up for me while listening to Aubrey’s latest. I can’t say much because I feel that even this confession is too telling. But I will meander around The Big Truth to tell a smaller truth about vibes, and nostalgia, and sense memory, and what happens to the body when big feelings are left unsaid and undone, and why music maybe provokes all these things most.
My expectations for the album were below the earth’s crust. The last few have been lackluster-to-bad. So, when I pressed play and heard the Kenny G elevator intro I rolled my eyes. But the “Falling Back” felt good. The familiar feeling of singing-Drake (who I hands down prefer to rapping-Drake, controversial opinion I’m aware) corny and crooning over the pulse, jolted something awake in me. My head floated out of my head.
First, I felt like I was having a manic episode or a religious experience. I was so happy I thought I could cry. He’s back I thought. For context, More Life came out the weekend of my 21st birthday, and I danced, and drank the perfect amount of French 75s, and felt suspended in air all night. The mood-anvil fell eventually, but “Passionfruit” made (and makes) me feel invincible. It was a break in the monotonous dissociation of chronic illness. It was good for me, the beat. Driving down the backroads with friends at night to the soundtrack of “Get It Together”. This album took me back there.
I didn’t realize I was being nostalgic when I texted my loved ones incredibly dramatic messages last night, even irrational ones that now in the clarity of morning I realize the heinousness of—my unabashedly stanning in a deeply uncharacteristic way. But now I know that the jolt was my body trying to get back back back.
Part of this is about vibes, which are fundamentally irrational, ethereal—about the elusive and eternal chasing of that impalpable feeling, unnameable feeling, the hunger for it. For the want to dance, to float, to lock eyes with someone you’re drawn to.
The songs on this album waft in and out of each other, borderless; some sounds are dissonant, jarring, discordant, annoying. Absolutely do not listen to any of the lyrics. Some sounds are melodic. Some sounds are purple-blue, some purple-red.
My first priority is to find some champagne, and quickly. My second priority is to find a clingy black dress and dance. It’s hell-hot outside, and thank God for it.
We only remember the blissful things so we don’t keel over at the gravity of all the bad. We remember the bad itself as blissful. Nostalgia is a coping mechanism for loss. The longing fills a gap that in fact can never be filled, but our yearning creates an illusion of both closeness and distance that keeps us distracted from what we never had, or can never have, or did have and lost.
I know nothing will quench my heart. I cannot wait until the longing fades and yet it doesn’t seem to. I’m just that type of person. I tend to stack loves atop loves and my heart expands to make room rather than removing those certain impossibilities I should leave behind. Without permission my body lets memory in in a way I wish it would have let the love in at the time it was right in front of me.
After listening, I went to dinner with all those past loves in a dream. We did not speak, only ate octopus and drank, and it was weirdly sort of jolly. It’s a risk to listen to this album again, for fear of what doors in me will swing open at the sound. But the masochism, the sacrifice of intrusive memory is a human need in service of other needs— like love, like vibes, like music.
Comments
No posts