Maybe I'm Getting Old...

I don't think I'll ever get used to looking back at my childhood. I mean, when did it end? I spent most of my early teenage years telling myself childhood was done and dusted; I was an adult, I was responsible, I was awesome. But now that I've hit the 18 milestone, I'm left feeling a little lost. I've got an earth-shakingly deep voice, messy facial hair and I'm legally able to buy booze (in Europe at least); But the thing is, I don't feel any different. I might aswell be sitting in a sandpit playing with plastic dinosaurs. Thankfully I've dropped the habit of spending 364 days a year waiting for Christmas though...

Anyway, the source of this Nostalgia was a song. A beautiful song.

Romulus by Sufjan Stevens. I happened accross this golden nugget on one of my epic Spotify journeys (article on Spotify will follow shortly - I love it). I put it on, and I was bowled over. Something about it just sent me straight into Philosophical mode. I wasn't sitting on an Ikea chair hunched over my 250$ laptop - I was laying with my head on the grass, staring up into the infinite vaccuum of space.

After the first 5 listens I wikipedia'd Mr. Sufjan Stevens, turns out he's an absolute legend. He plays something like 25 different instruments, and composes all of his own stuff. I'm yet to find a song written by him which I don't like. This particular song was from a concept album written by him and one of his buddies; an album entirely written about the state of Michigan, I find that stuff inspirational.

The point of all this is that I've been getting more and more into this style of music recently - Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Johnny Cash. I love it. I love how the lyrics can give such fascinating insights into life and emotion: I love how they can be familiar and mysterious at the same time... I won't go on, this kind of writing isn't my strong point. But this sudden onset of folk-music syndrome is threatening my youthfulness. I mean, I'm still wholly into much extreme dance beats, metal, indie... whatever - but whenever I hear a hip-hop beat about a sweaty club, or how some ego-centric man in a mercedes thinks that the club "can't handle him" (I always thought that clubs were designed to handle sunglass clad men in Mercedes...) I find myself thinking "What a racket!" And then struggling to hold back "Kids nowadays..." mutterings.

Having said that, I was never into that kind of music anyway. And I can still rock out to the angst ridden tracks of Linkin Park - Meteora - The first album I ever owned. So maybe I'm not becoming an old fogey. Maybe we never truly "grow up". I don't know, that's some hardcore philosophical shiz there.