“Stories of Songs of Stories”,
written on Friday, February 24, 2023

I personally think 2016 was when “mindless” dubstep graduated, or mellowed-out to mainstream chillstep. I’ve always mentioned that, along the literally 1000s of indie tracks I’ve sampled, there’s always this one unmistakably unique song, which comes around at the right time, to make the right sense and sometimes… it finds more meaning when having have been had listened to for the first time with a then-thought, “right” person…. that last bit’s is a story for some other day, maybe.

The first day of January-2016 was also when I first came back to the US to be at UF. I stayed at this AirBnB (which was coincidentally hosted by a Saudi – this already took me in time) when I was reached Gainesville. A few days later, I had gotten off the bus for the first time, at the helipad stop on the way back from UF, at around 8 P.M… early in January, it was especially cold given the wind. Freezing, I recalled that I had my headphones with me and hurriedly put them on, quite soon after realizing that I hadn’t listened to music since I had gotten off the plane. I thought I’d try listening to new music and decided to put on something new (which, to the best of my memory, was SoundCloud).

… This song began playing. I began realizing that the last time I had been there was when JnX was there just 2 years prior. The feeling that I had “made it back” but him not being around to have seen, didn’t feel right, and I recall distinctly recall feeling sickly cold, right around when the cellos kicked in… and, for first of the only few times since – I recall “hearing” the cold. I’m sure where I was, had to play as well. But, this (of 2 songs), when listening-to in the right moments, still makes my hair stand in recollection of conjunctions of such mixed feelings… which viscerally makes me feel cold.