LCD Soundsystem, "Sound Of Silver"

It's about that simple, you know.  You hear some song on the radio and it afflicts you with nostalgia, a dreadful amnesiac's disease.  Or maybe it's the sound of silver on your shelf if you came from that era when the compact disc was supposed to be the Final Format for all recorded music for all time.  So you remember how young you were and how passionate everything was--

--and then recall how much it sucked.

At least it did for me.  Those were the worst years of my life, hands down, no doubt about it, and it's hard to conceive of a year being any worse without an actual death being involved.  I don't want to be too broad in scope--there could be a worse epoch, if death were involved.  But injury or sickness, I don't think that would do it, because being a teenager was a disease I went through, and eventually recovered from.

A long while back, a very old friend posted very old photographs to Facebook in which I appear as a child, as a teenager.  And I look at that stranger and I'm a little grateful I don't know him.  Very little clue who he is.  Depresses me to think about him, really.  I don't know that I want to elaborate; I hate to parcel out these tiny teasers and not deliver.

But then, one reason I don't want to go any further is that I think this stranger who used to be myself is somebody I've put so far back behind me, it's subjectively discomforting to think about him at all.  I can tell you objectively what he felt, as if I read about it in a book about someone else, a piece of fiction in a magazine most likely, but telling you why this person felt that way is so much harder to get into, because I don't know if I still have any subjective knowledge of this person at all.  Anyway, he lived a long time ago, and perhaps in a foreign country, and I heard a rumor he died.

I don't know if this is just me or if this is how we all obliterate parts of ourselves to survive.

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(fan video for "Sound Of Silver" by gigi46)