My Acolyte Journey: 2014.15

Eternal Sunshine
Jhene Aiko. I have put this off, obviously, but now I put it off with the page actually open to it. I don't know why I seem to loathe this so much, but really I've just wasted eight of the last sixty hours. Maybe more like twenty. It feels like that, anyway. And that whole time, I've been teaching kids who don't act grateful and don't have an intellectual life and can't verbalize their thoughts: awful. So is it strange for me to say that if I were to die today, there's not a thing I would change? I've lived well. Maybe I have made mistakes and been through my fair share of pain, but all in all, it's been okay.
I've lived well.
And maybe that's why this song works so well for me: it fits into my narrative. Yesterday, I saw a picture of somebody sitting down doing largely nothing, but doing it outside. It looked amazing, and I realized I had nostalgia for summer. I hate summer. But, as the song points out, there's a strangely human tendency to focus on the good parts of life and the moments that we want to remember. We place these things into our personal narrative and create our own past (In case that link is confusing, it might help to know that Boswell was a total fawner and wrote pretty much just good stuff that Johnson told him).

The song's focus on "only the good things" hearkens to its namesake, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I have seen this film. Disclaimer: I hate Jim Carrey's face because of some early childhood memories and I don't have any nostalgia for his insipid humor. I liked this movie but I wouldn't recommend it. If I recall correctly, it was incredibly pretentious without being incredibly enjoyable, and it beat the audience upside the head with a subtlety stick. Go for the Truman Show, or better yet read a book.

Listening to the song, I feel contemplative. It feels like the meaning of the words is lost on the enchanting slowness of the song. I'm loving the sound of it, and after listening to it, I feel Dear Esther. I feel Perks of Being a Wallflower. I feel slow and important. I feel like sleeping in and holding somebody I love.

I'm having trouble with this metric of "I would buy this." I've bought Mika and Pharrell and The Neighborhood, but I don't think I've bought anything else. I've at least thought about Roar? I really like this song, and Elton John from last year, and OctaHate, Extraordinary, and Hideaway. Never Catch Me is growing on me, but I just don't feel like buying them. That's wrong.

If I wanted a good song, I would buy this. I would put it with When September Ends and I Will Follow You into the Dark for rainy days when I want to feel some type of way. I'm not sure. I'm just not sure.

update
There's a video now. It's got Aiko floating very slowly up from an asphalt surface to reveal, beneath her and very far below now, herself: being dragged from a van that has crashed. In flashes, we see her family and the moments proceeding the crash.
Do I think the video helps the song? A little. There isn't much to the song (we only remember the good things because otherwise we find pain in our past), and there isn't much to the video. The video matches beautifully to the song and doesn't get in the way. I would say that as far as pairings go, it's nearly the best on the list so far, but . . . there's something about watching the video to a Jhene Aiko song that distracts me more than I'd like.
I think closing my eyes in a dark room and hitting play is better.