(Originally published as Ruminations #2 www.coffeewithcutter.com)

Almost every member of the human race, I believe, has a tendency to romanticise the past. I’m not sure why, but I suppose there is something about the past that is safe. It’s cemented as a moment or era in time, without the possibility of change, without the possibility of return. Unlike the future, which is forever resigned to linger in the hazy depths of the unknown, the past is something that is clear and unchanging, for better or for worse. I have a habit of reflecting back on the past, maybe too often. Music, I find, plays a large role in summoning memories of former lives. It’s one of the many awe-inspiring powers that the medium holds. Shinedown’s If You Only Knew resurrects memories of how I felt when I entered my first relationship with my college girlfriend (over ten years ago now, wow…) and even though that relationship ended terribly, I still love that song and allow myself, for three minutes or so, to remember what it felt like to be sixteen and experiencing (what I believed) to be love at that naive age. Skillet’s One Day Too Late transports me even further back, to high-school, because that was the song a friend and I selected to use as the soundtrack to the Powerpoint presentation we were assigned to create for our Leavers Assembly. To this day, the lyrics of that song still feel relevant, and it reminds me of that universal feeling of leaving school and, as a result, saying goodbye to a lot of friends you grew up with. Futures, Jimmy Eat World’s fifth (and best) record, left an undeniable impression on me from the ages of eighteen to twenty-one (I recommend each and every one of you listen to the song 23 if you’ve never heard it), and it's an album that always takes me back to one of my favourite ‘eras’, if you will, of my life: my university years as a Creative Writing student. But of all the albums that have earned a permanent place in my heart over the course of my life, the one that provokes the most emotion out of me is Hammock’s Departure Songs, an epic double-album of shoegaze/ambience.

I love the cover art for Departure Songs; I love its mystery, I love its sense of serenity that hides an aura of sadness. It struck a chord with me the moment I first discovered it. Tracks like Cold Front, Ten Thousand Years Won’t Save Your Life, Together Alone, (Tonight) We Burn Like Stars That Never Die, Words You Said…I’ll Never Forget You Now, and Frailty (For the Dearly Departed) are among some of my absolute favourites on the album, and whenever I revisit Hammock’s magnum opus I’m taken back to my university years, when my life was very, very different. Whilst I was studying Creative Writing, I was working a part time job at a local pub as a pot washer, which was a thirty minute walk from my parents house (I didn’t live on campus, as it was only a twenty minute bus ride from my town), and I balanced my time between working on short stories and short films for assignments (one of which served as the basis for my book, The Ascension of the Seventh), going out on the weekends, carelessly pissing money up the wall on booze, and socialising with the university’s film society, a small community of like-minded individuals who shared my passion for film. All the while, I remained focused on my dream of one day becoming a published author and wrote weekly film reviews for a local newspaper. It was a great time, and I’ll always hold those three years dear to my heart. Every night, after a shift at the pub (it would always end with me cleaning down the kitchen left in a shit-tip disarray, and sometimes locking up the place if it was a really late shift), I walked home with Departure Songs playing through my headphones. Listening to Departure Songs at night amplifies the raw power and mystical beauty of that album. It’s impossible not to feel something.

Back then, when I listened to songs like Ten Thousand Years Won’t Save Your Life or Words You Said… I’ll Never Forget You Now, they didn’t spawn memories of the past or emotions of the present. I’d think of the future, because something inside of me knew that those three years spent in university, studying Creative Writing and working my shitty pot washing job and hanging out with my film society clan, would be the years I would always look upon with great fondness, because I knew they couldn’t last forever. In no time at all, it would all have to end. And then, in the blink of an eye, it did come to an end, and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel a little lost for a long while after. To my mind, those were the golden years, full of optimism and anticipation for the future where anything at all was possible. I quit my job as a pot washer in the weeks leading up to graduation and found work in a call centre (never, ever, ever subject yourself to call centre work, it will destroy your soul), parted ways with practically all of my university circle (save for two whom I still keep in contact with), and then, in a cruel twist of fate, was diagnosed with a fierce stomach tumour that altered the course of my life and distorted my once positive, happy-go-lucky self into something more cynical and nihilistic. I’ve struggled with bouts of depression in the years since my illness, and the physical/mental toll it has taken on me over the years has begun to catch up, and fast. I don’t normally like using the word depression. I think it gets thrown around a lot these days, but nevertheless, I can tell you with confidence that it’s what I feel. Life tends to feel heavy, for me. It isn’t what it once was, and I couldn’t expect it to be, after everything. Circling back to Departure Songs: I would often think about the future of my life during those walks back home late at night. I would envision myself as an older man, a much older man, elderly, sitting on my front bench or porch overlooking some peaceful countryside landscape at night, reflecting on my youth and all that I’ve seen, accomplished and lost throughout the course of my life. That’s what the album has often provoked me to feel; a future vision of melancholic reflection of a life well lived, whilst potentially preparing to say goodbye to it all before the inevitable closing curtain. I guess I’ve always had something of a fascination with endings, even before my illness struck.

I think the reason for this romanticised perspective I hold towards my university years is because those three years were the very last years before my illness, the calm before the storm. Those were the years where the future was looking at its most optimistic; it was before my tumour turned everything upside down, it was before I understood what it felt like to experience survivor's guilt after the passing of a friend, it was before depression became a mainstay, it was before I made peace with the potential of dying young. It was the last time life felt normal. Unburdened. I’d listen to Departure Songs during hospital stays, before I knew whether or not the experimental drug would save me or prove futile against what was growing in my stomach. During those nights, my vision of that elderly man on his front porch at night began to grow ever more unlikely. It still is, I suppose. We never know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Nowadays, Departure Songs is even more profound and mystical than it ever was before. It reminds me of those three years of a life left behind, but I’m happy to say I can still see that older version of myself, sitting on that front porch, and whenever I do, it reminds me that the depression isn’t winning, and that the tumour failed to win, and that there are still greater days yet to come. I still struggle, but I know I’ve got it good. Things are good, and I wouldn’t have my life any other way (save for a lottery win, that would be nice), and I remain hopeful that the depression I experience, and the mental turmoil that still remains, will not last forever.