i have to avoid listening to certain music when i'm in a mood that i don't associate with it. i'm not referring to simply not having a taste for more depressing music when i'm in a good mood or something to that effect, i mean some music will literally change my mood or confuse me emotionally if i'm not careful. early red house painters material is a good example: mark kozelek can really depress the fuck out of you. down colorful hill, for example. someday i'll do a post about how "medicine bottle" and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind somehow relate in my head.

anyway, i chanced it because i have some powerful mental associations with those songs as "summer music" and not just "sad music," though i can certainly remember several points in the past where the two were quite indistinguishable. what i felt when i gave "michael" (from the album mentioned above) a listen was nothing less than a profound surge of guilt. kozelek details the search for an old friend and relates several past experiences. just in time for the last verse an awesome song musically gets even better with the addition of a truly wonderful guitar part that ends up being the most memorable part of the song. i can't really relate to most of the lyrics, but i can relate to losing old friends and the feeling i get from the music itself. so where does the guilt come in? it's something like this:

at this point in our lives, after high school and in the early years of college and adulthood, we're meeting a lot of new people and losing touch with others from before. i can think of more than a few people (and one in particular) that i really wish i still talked to, and i feel guilty, as i imagine everyone does to some degree, for not doing something on my end to stay in touch. then i stop and think that i haven't heard anything in a year or more from some of these people anyway, so the fault can't be entirely mine. there's an icy solidification between that last conversation, whether it was expected to be the last or not, and that point in the future where the next one may take place if it ever does. i'm talking about the long gaps here, not that "we all go our separate ways in summer" malaise currently taking place. possibly and in some cases probably, they don't want to talk to me or wouldn't care either way. i'm known for thinking more highly of others than they do of me, so that wouldn't be much of a surprise. still, from where i'm standing, sometimes i really feel like i should pick up the phone or somehow prove that i'm still around.