I've talked about trips down memory lane before. Sometimes they are good. Sometimes they aren't. A song came on yesterday morning that sent me down the tree on Dagobah type of memory lane, remembering my failures. The song was "Far Behind" by Candlebox. In an instant, I was transported to 1994 and it wasn't good.
I don't think I need to go into a long spiel about the importance of music and how one song can often put us in a time and place while evoking very specific emotions and vivid memories of who we were and what we were doing at the time. This song did that and it shook me.
Now, Candlebox wasn't Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam or Stone Temple Pilots, the sort of four pillars of 90s alt rock/Grunge. They were part of the "post Grunge" movement, a sort of second generation of alt rockers kind of mixing Grunge with a more mainstream sound. And I liked it. I'm a guy that writes YA Game of Thrones or GOT Lite, so this was right up my alley. My beloved Foo Fighters are considered part of this movement, by the way, as was Nickelback. Candlebox could be considered a guilty pleasure because they weren't as lauded and respected as Nirvana or STP. When I think of this I think of Austin Kleon quoting Dave Grohl, of my beloved Foos and one of my artistic idols, "I don't believe in guilty pleasures. If you f**king like something, like it." This is so true. (There's a blog in me about music snobs, but that's for another time.) Judge me for my love of Candlebox, the Monkees, Tom Jones and Halsey all you want.
The song dredged up a lot of memories in just under 5 minutes of drive time. And driving is the best/worst time for thinking. I've talked before how that time in my life '94-'96 weren't a good time for me. I still have dark revelations and bad memories of a bad time in my life, perhaps the lowest. These revelations makes me relive and dwell on bad choice after bad choice I was making. Choices that made no sense and make me realize how lucky I am to have wound up where I am. I know why I wound up where I did and it rhymes with Rimberly. But still, I found myself in the dark cave underneath the tree again remembering how I told people I'd be on the New York Times Bestseller list by the time I was 26. I wasn't. I wanted to be a writer, but didn't put any of the work in. I didn't work on my craft. I just screwed around. I was listless. I thought I was better than I was, both as a writer and who I was at the time. I had no reason not to write, yet I didn't. I chose excuses and sloth instead.
I often joke that all my stories, especially the fantasies, take place in the 90s because I want to tap into the anger I have in myself over that period of my life. Looking at my character play lists I create for my multi-POV epics, much of it is music from the 90s. Music that reminds me of those dark times and I rely on that nostalgia to tell the stories I tell. The melancholy of that time period is held at bay because I am in my "story world" and it becomes almost therapeutic situation where I tackle who I was and what I was doing.
The next song was "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" by another of my favorite bands, The Smashing Pumpkins (who have kind of gone off the deep end lately). It didn't move me the way "Far Behind" did and I was left rolling over those old memories around in my head. I worked my way out of that cave, partially by writing this.
So, thanks Candlebox for creating an important piece of art. I listened to your first album while making dinner for my family last night after finishing a draft of this piece. I was feeling better, refreshed. And filled with some good memories of that time in my life and what I've managed to do with my failures.
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