End of Summer

Pen loves the moon and is always amazed and excited to see it up in the sky. Especially during daylight hours. Twilight yesterday we were taking the monster for a walk when Pen pointed up in the sky and said "The Moon!" with a beatific smile on her face. It has been waxing the last few days and being low in the sky it looked big and bright. Looking up at the moon my music-addled brain started singing REM's "Nightswimming," specifically the line "September's coming soon, I'm pining for the moon." Quite apropos,as we are in the tail end of August and September, Fall, Shorter Days and all that entails is not too far off. So, a perfect excuse to give "Nightswimming" a spin while at work this morning. That song is my favorite REM song and one of my all time favorites as well. It's so beautiful and melancholy and aching and nostalgic and all that. I always think to myself, "August is the perfect time to hear this song" because of that lyric. Yet I almost forget to listen to it every single year. This year though I am excited to hear it now when I think it's most appropriate. Little things like this make me happy.

Lists also make happy, specifically music lists. So this train of thought got me thinking of other end of summer tunes. The only one that comes to me is The Caesars' "Spirit" which has the line "Like September's coming on /Summer won't be back for long ." It's a good song and I also think now is the best time for it. For whatever reason it also makes me think of High School bonfires, pep rallies and football games.

This in turn gets me thinking of "Mr. November" by The National which is the perfect High School football song (aside from all the fucks.)

I doubt I'll ever get a playlist of end of Summer songs besides the two above, and I know for certain I won't put together a High School football playlist. In the future years I will just try to remember the right time to get these songs on.

Turning point in a Career

Have I come to the point where I am stuck due to a certain comfort level financially? 

What's more important, money or happiness? And are they always exclusive of one another?

False Memories

I am listening to Passion Pit's Manners. It's a wonderful album. A sugar rush of energy and throwback yet modern 80's sounds. It came out in 2008, but I didn't discover it until 2009 or 2010. It kept popping up on my Pandora stations and I couldn't help but love it. So I bought it and I have listened to it a lot in the last 4+ years. Yet, the odd thing is I feel like I have been listening to it for a much longer time. As if I had heard them and loved them during my college years. It would have been a perfect album on the long-distance trips from Indiana to Ohio, or my various other explorations through middle of nowhere farmland. I can even imagine these songs soundtracking my high school years, though I don't think their poppiness would have sat well with the angst-ridden teen I was. These things never happened though. I've never gone on a road trip as a (relatively) carefree young adult with this album playing. I never heard it blasting out of the speakers at a teenage house party when the parents were away. Mostly I have just listened to it while doing data-entry as a (relatively) full of cares adult. I'm sure these false memories have  to do with the throwback sounds I get from it. But I really do feel like I am rewiring my brain to think that these things actually happened. A form of wishful thinking. "This would have been the perfect college album if it had come out during my college years!" "This is a great song for my teenage bash!"

I wonder if in 20-30 years as I move into and out of middle-age will I have forgotten reality? Will I have a gilded memory of something that never occurred? Will it really matter?

Moods

Try not to let their negativity affect your day.