Nostalgia, or, When Blogging at Midnight…

I just stumbled on this video (produced by a Lynchburg photographer) and it made me so nostalgic & homesick for Holland, Michigan, and Hope College — not for the place so much as the memories. The dreamy fireworks sequence, and that song and so much keeps flooding back. 

While cleaning up my attic studio today, I came across two cassette tapes (remember those?) with individual broadcasts I did on 89.9 WTHS. I listened for awhile, since they contained many favorite songs. It was a little strange to hear my voice, now five years younger. That girl sounds so happy and content on air, but there were so many hidden insecurities, sort of these figurative monsters under the bed. Thankfully, I think I knew even then that the growing pains would someday subside. 

It’s hard to believe how out of touch I feel with college friends, or how much my life has changed since then. Listening to Sufjan Stevens or Rosie Thomas brings it all flooding back. Today the cassette tapes were warbling in the background while I lost myself in a painting and for a moment, I nearly forgot I had a daughter and husband downstairs. That I was painting in the attic of our house. That I was 27. In that moment, I could almost be 20 again (21? don’t know which years I taped the shows), talking into the microphone of the tiny studio in DeWitt, watching the students pause at the ATM. That radio studio doesn’t even exist anymore; the station moved after I graduated to the new digs in the Martha Miller Center. 

I played Sufjan’s student EP. He went to our college, we had his stuff in our music library even before he stormed onto the indie scene. Ever since, his songs have become intwined with my personal history. My roadtrip cds included “Chicago” even before it appeared as the soundtrack to the opening roadtrip sequence of Little Miss Sunshine. 

This post wasn’t meant to be a tribute to Sufjan, or a lame attempt at indie posturing. But it’s nearly 1 a.m. and everyone’s asleep except me – and just before I logged off for the night, I found this video and suddenly remembered flat tires in Ohio, a golden harvest moon rising above Grand Rapids, the Pine Grove, singing with Mary while she played her guitar, and so much more…

I was in love with the place

In my mind, in my mind

I made a lot of mistakes, 

In my mind, in my mind…

 

You can see John Carl’s video below:

we were in love from John Carl on Vimeo.