Today we drove back from Maine concluding a family trip and an 11 year anniversary to cap off the summer. On the ride home we put on Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s a perfect album, and it did the thing to me that only music can do. It transported me back to 2009 in the East Village. I love how a song or album can do that. Whenever I hear The Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over, A Day in the Life, or Your So Vain I find myself driving in a car with my dad on a ski trip in Arizona at some point in the mid ‘90s. Unlike anything else, music conjures memories in the most beautiful way.
https://open.spotify.com/track/3eaJHhtNsKOumLQYU7bnas?si=GLVmq4EzSQ-TJaM8jsHROg
Listening to MPP I looked back on that time in my life fondly. I remember our 6 story walk up at 418.5 East 9th Street. Lugging bags of laundry and luggage up the flights of stairs. I remember walking a lot around the East Village. The Mud truck I’d grab morning coffee at while grabbing the 6 train at Astor Place on the way to work at tumblr. Brunches at the Mud restaurant and the egg and avocado dish I used to order. Buying groceries at Commodities Natural Market on 1st Ave. Walking the Tompkins Square Farmers Market on the weekends with Carrie and buying flounder from the fish monger who would advise, “butter, parsley and a pinch of salt.” Whitman’s hamburger that was filled with a molten ball of cheese on the inside. Passing momofuku and always telling myself I should eat there more. Slowly but surely becoming an adult with the person I’d get married to shortly thereafter, and with whom I’d have two beautiful children.
Music can do wonderful things. Happy anniversary, Carrie.