Thursday, September 25, 2008

An Oddly Familiar Tune...

Dear Jas,

This year is a lot like buying a new album by an artist you love.
There'll be lots of songs you'll fall in love with instantly, some that will capture a particular sentiment perfectly, and some songs you'd honestly rather just skip. But, like all the albums you've listened to, you're gonna have to let it play from beginning to end before you can say you loved it, hated it, or wished you'd bought another one instead. This is the choice you made, and the first nine tracks of this year have been a really big journey.


From the party anthem of “O-week” to the dramatic instrumental of June exams, interspersed with songs about love and hate, happiness and pain, each one with its own musicality, all the songs strike a different key, and they all make the album whole. Take the jarring yet beautiful notes of falling in love (yes Love that's what I said, don't run off screaming, hear me out) and the crashing guitar riffs of realising that it will never work, add the soulful lyrics of lazy afternoons spent in the sun with friends, with a bitter element of home-sickness (and real sickness as your immune system seems to fail utterly this year); remember soft Sunday jazz as you prepare for Monday's tutorial and top off with a crazy, get-up and dance tune for all the partying and you have the perfect song, the song that has been your life for the nine months of this year. Before you know it, the album will be done, so please take the time to listen carefully to each note, each word, each bar of the song, because you will never get a second chance to listen to a song for the first time.

And on that note I leave you,
Neo

1 comment:

Miss Migraine said...

Wow. I would leave it at that one word but honestly I believe that your post deserves a far more elaborate response (and according to ruconnected this has to be 150 words). In your letter to your younger self you told your own story as well as mine and I'm sure many others out there. The way in which you combine the joys and disappointments of a new album and the ups and downs of University life are amazing. (79)

Your post is not simply a "pretty" piece of writing but rather a collection of all the things that Rhodes brings to the lives of its first years. When reading your post out loud to myself it feels as though I am speaking in time with an imaginary rhythm. Welldone. I think your blog is amazing and you guys are doing a really good job. check out our blog: balancing beams.

Miss Migraine