Ethan on ILM flailing to describe a condition I’ve been experiencing (and therefore trying to explicate) for some time now. Listening right now to the new(est) Unwound record – and yes, it’s every bit as good as everyone makes it out to be…I’ll be sad to see them go – and I’ll be damned if I can get worked up about it in the slightest. My ears feel as if they’re packed with oatmeal, or maybe rather that it’s dribbling slowly out of the little holes in my speakers. Everything sounds like extruded siding or the stuff they use to make the ceiling panels in public school ceilings.
Of course, being sick doesn’t help much. When I’m sick – sick sick, sick of the unable to move from bed for a few days variety – all music sounds like this. It’s a bit like being trapped in some ennui mobius strip; the more clogged my head, the higher the fever rises, the more my throat aches, the more the music feels like a swarm of locusts between my ears. I’ve had records ruined by their association with particularly bad illnesses.
Sometimes I think the whole thing makes recovery take just that much longer: being unable to do anything but suck up TV like an Electrolux, cut off from my normal lifesblood of recorded sound. I’m ever so slowly crawling out of my current pit of despair (call it apocalyptic acid reflux…and trust me, it’s nothing you want to experience if you can avoid it), but music is taking longer than ever to reinsinuate itself into my life. It hasn’t helped that I was feeling increasingly alienated from music before I took ill.
Today is apparently the first day of spring. It’s bitter cold outside, and snowed pretty much all day yesterday. Spring/summer (and the endless pop thrillz they promise) seems ever so far away.