Some Some Expressions Take Me Back

Some expressions take me back, like "Hair of Gold" and "Sweet Mary" and "Running to Me". The sweet sweet songs that cloud your eyes - nostalgia supplies.

These lyrics by the amazing Paddy McAloon threw me for a loop. I heard them for the first time in two decades recently. Indeed they took me back. Back to think and digest and hurt and relish.  Who can argue the effect your past experiences have on your present situation? Yet as I look back, needle pricks of regret well up while I smile knowingly.

Silliness. That's what it could be called. Yet oh so valuable.

The sweet sweet songs that cloud your eyes - nostalgia supplies.

Prefab Sprout is one of my all time favorite bands. Add their album Swoon to my 10 all time favorites, please. They came into my life in the early '80s with a sound I liked. No, rephrase that - LOVED. Strings. Disparate vocals. Interesting lyrics. Best of all, they were from the UK. No one in the states really knew them; no one in my Midwestern sphere at least.

I remember (here it goes, folks) walking to my classes with my Sony Walkman blaring. Bumping into people on the University Ave. Bridge cause I was looking out the windows and dreaming of being anywhere but there. Late, late adolescent angst. Post self coming-out blues. All the dark feelings of "holy shit, I'm an adult now!"

The sweet sweet songs

To hear these tunes so many years later is such a kick in the pants. With a very different life and a very different perspective, they hold an appealing illumination of past and present. 10 years ago I would have likely been in a funk for days; swept up into self-pity and all that other self-indulgent crap. Now they have a different home. A place of energetic memory almost like a cold water jolt in the still-sleepy not-coffeed-yet morning. They remind me of a less encumbered time when it was fun to think of the possibilities instead of dreading reality. A place of creativity that has been lacking yet yearned for.

Some Expressions take me back

Indeed.

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