Don't Trust Your Photographs

I purchased the self-titled album by Fleet Foxes on December 27th 2008. I had never heard of them before and was very intrigued by the album cover. It grew on me, becoming one of my favorite albums of the year. It wasn't until eight months later, when my comrade Grant bought the album on vinyl that I was shown the liner notes written by Robin Pecknold and Skyler Skjelset. This is some of what they wrote; (please read this in it's entire)

"My first memory has always been of me and my mom on a cold grey day down at some beach in Washington, along the puget sound somewhere near Seattle. I would be around two or three years old and we're with a friend of mine from the neighborhood and his mom. Walking around among the driftwood looking for crabs. Even now, I can remember the smell and temperature of the air, the feeling of the sand and the swaying tall grass I can even remember looking over at my friend and how his face looked when he smiled back at me Another memory that I'll sometimes recall as my first memory is dressing up in the dead of winter as Jack London with tennis rackets on my feet and wearing my dad's hiking pack, in the middle of summer after seeing Disney's (terrible) version of White Fang. or There's the memory of stealing my neighbor's big wheel and riding it halfway down the block before getting caught and having to turn around defeated, or of wearing a fireman's outfit while washing my parent's car, or eating an orange popsicle from the ice cream truck.

These are and have always been some of my most distinct and persistent memories of childhood, so i came as a disappointment to me when one day as a teenager I opened up a photo album and found pictures of each and every one of those memories. I didn't have a single memory that didn't belong to or somehow grow from pictures my parents had taken of me when I was growing up even the scenes I remember so clearly in my head are from the same angles as those photographs and I don't really know what to to make of it. I'm going to guess that I'd seen all theses photographs at some point, forgotten they were just photographs and over time made them into my most tangible memories. That's scary to me in a way.

This leads me to something weird about the power music has, it's transportative ability. Any time I hear a song or record that meant a lot to me at a certain moment or I was listening to at a distinct time, I'm instantly taken back to that place in full detail..."

I can't describe to you how relevant Pecknold's thoughts are to my own. He goes on to explain in detail how music is like a 'time machine' that can deliver both memories and emotions. For eight months I've lived with these notes in my possession and i had just disregarded it for just a brown paper sleeve that held the Cd. I want to thank Grant for showing this to me.

Song recommendation: "These Days" - Nico http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_z_UEuEMAo

go make some memories,

-Brendan