Anti-Climacus

INTRODUCTION:

There are several things that remind me of my first semester at Duke: listening to A Better Version of Me many times on the drive down; the long evening driving around north Durham, listening to Aimee Mann's "I've Had It," when I most seriously considered dropping out of grad school; and all of Bryter Layter, which is the sound of many bright, sunny days walking around my neighborhood. The exception is the first song on the album, "Introduction" (he's not much of one for titles; not-great cover on youtube here; uploading an mp3 is apparently impossible).

I've only ever been to New York City once in my life: grow up in the Midwest, and you are more likely to focus on Chicago, or if you're especially exotic, Los Angeles. The visit to NYC was a long and hectic day that began coming up through Penn Station and ended by running over the Brooklyn Bridge to watch classical music on a barge,* and included a lengthy stop at the Met. None of these things are particularly close when you're on foot, I think. "Introduction" is the song I had in my head that day, and it's inevitable that whenever I hear it, I remember everything that happened. It's the sort of experience for which the phrase "impressionistic blur" was invented, but one moment stands out: sitting on a bench in Central Park, eating one of those shaved-ice things, and talking with someone in particular. I've never entirely understood how songs get fixed to times or places, despite the number of times it's happened in my life, but the memory is clearer for the song, and the song is something more than a 90-second introduction to the album because of the memory.

Since I was unable to produce the actual song in this case, here's another good Nick Drake song, with one of my favorite lyrics: "If songs were lines in the conversation/ The situation would be fine."


*technically I suppose it ended by running to catch the last train back to Princeton, but running was involved either way