♪♫ ♪ ♪♫

Float (My Electric Stargirl)
Atomic Swindlers
Coming Out Electric
2004

♥: I have been returning to 2005 over the past few days.
I'm not sure what kickstarted it, but I'm inclined to think it's the beginning of Degree #3. Being back at McGill, instead of throwing me back to my beloved Fall '08, has somehow put me back in the simultaneously uncertain and excited state that was Fall '05.

Fall 2005 was an interesting time in my life. I moved out, started my B.A., kind of started "seeing someone", and -- perhaps most importantly -- got high speed internet.

OH.
THE MUSIC.
I spent hours, hours, HOURS downloading. MORE THAN 3kbps?! WHAT. Every spare minute I had, I was online. mp3.com. Limewire. Soulseek. LJ communities. I could download whole albums in half the time it used to take to download one song? Like setting a meth addict loose in a lab, I was insatiable. An 8:30 class in five hours? Fuck it. Just another few albums. Some freshmen eschew sleep for partying; I did it for music.


There are dozens and dozens of songs that define that period in my life, but the one song I listened to, latched to, became one with,
was Float (My Electric Stargirl).
I had it on repeat so consistently, my then-roommate asked me if I was studying it for my Art of Listening class. I don't know what it was about the song that I never got sick of --- I'm not usually the kind of person who can listen to one song ad infinitum, but if you go back in my LJ to posts from September and October '05, I am always referring to this song. It was my fucking lifeblood. In the midst of all that intense confusion and all those new beginnings, the throwbacks to 70s glamrock -- the scifi lyrics -- the oh-so-Bowie-esque vibe --- was everything I needed to keep me going.

But I think, more than anything, there was one line that killed me:
"One more revolution and I'll be gone."
Maybe it was the inklings of my love affair with Nietzsche (specifically the eternal return); maybe it was the beginning of my hatred of stasis and repetition; maybe it was just my newfound freedom, how everything was suddenly fresh and I could pack up and just LEAVE, if I really wanted to. My choices suddenly mattered. My life was suddenly mine.


Back to 2011:
it's kind of reassuring to feel myself drawn to that point in time. I like the thought that my life -- despite the confusion, the new starts and the false starts and the lack of certainty -- is still mine.