YOU HAD TIME, ONCE
Well, there's a nip in the air again and the inevitable appropriation of Pumpkin Spice Lattes from across the pond has arrived and, for some reason, before I reach for the Brahms Symphonies and Concertos that typically dominate my autumn soundtrack, I decided to take a detour back down memory road to 90s indie music and more specifically, Ani DiFranco's 'You Had Time' which has all the familiar charm and melancholy of an out of tune piano - a perfect metaphor looking back at the moment in time around when it was recorded in 1994.
When I recall growing up in the 90s, I can't help but get a warm feeling of nostalgia as it seemed as if the control dials of western civilisation were generally balanced and young people and artists could sincerely focus on the things that really mattered, like love and heartbreak. Of course, I accept this may have been an illusion of being young and free of concerns about the more troubling aspects of growing up. It was for many, however, a relatively blissful decade of Charlie Brown-style adolescence (with a dash of 'Ren and Stimpy') and there was more than enough (non cyber) space to dream and connect us all as a generation. And those slightly older Gen Xers who sang the soundtrack to our idle dreaming were like wiser siblings who would offer us council in what lay ahead, though in so many ways they were just as naive as we were: blissfully unaware of the chaos soon to arrive in the 21st Century.
It was a time when you still looked up at the moon and stars at night with your eyes and not through your camera phone and atmospheric changes had less to do with a fear of climate change and more to do with being a sympathetic and emotional background for your personal moods. Autumn sunshine and late to fall leaves from trees felt symbolic of our not wanting our seemingly endless summer to end. When autumn did finally arrive, we understood something about how our feelings were as crunchy as the leaves we kicked up in the air as awkward new crushes developed with the new school/college term and old crushes became like songs we'd replaced with the latest hits on our personal Walkmans/Discmans.
These were the 'end of history' days Fukuyama opined about, where Bart Simpson's voice was still a relatively new phenomenon, Keanu Reeves still couldn't act and the nihilism of grunge seemed inexplicable amongst the idyll of television shows like 'Northern Exposure' that epitomised the near utopia democracy had achieved to that point. But somehow, even though we couldn't fathom in that moment that this 'golden age' would ever end, there was a sense (probably around 1998 - the time of the Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal) that it was 'time', as Tony Blair said, quoting 'Corinthians' at Princess Diana's funeral to put away 'childish things'. The age of psychotic corporate globalism, fuelled by the technological acceleration of the internet would soon arrive and the romance of first love and the faded scent of extinguished incense sticks would be far behind us.
Still, playing Ani Di Franco's exquisite song of mellow heartbreak today reminded me that music can provide a portal, returning us to the atmosphere of that time and while this September sun is shining and the sky is blue before the onset of autumn, I feel more than ever that music is the closest thing humanity has to a time machine for I can go back to the past for five minutes and return to the present without any fear of biological strain, quantum uncertainty or spacial displacement and the only side effect suffered is sweet melancholy, just like the song.