the future is in the past

the resurgence of the big pant and long songs your children will never enjoy

New skin for the old ceremony. What is old is reborn again as new. Polo just released their new Big Chino. Or what used to be known as — pants. The cyclical nature of fashion is nothing new, but sometimes it just kicks you right in the gut and make you get down on your old weak knees.

Oh, the tragedy of today. You start being alive for a bit and you realize the harrowing hollowness of it all. But there is such beauty in that clarity.

After reading this pant news. I was tuning into NJ 101.5 right as the opening chords of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes hit. The afternoon sun was fading into the first real true fall evening. I had about ten minutes left in my drive, perfect to take in an all-timer track I hadn’t heard in a minute. The song is a succinct 7 minutes and 24 seconds. I rolled down the windows.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes is long because sometimes songs were very long. I am not sure they make long songs anymore, I mean, surely they do, you just won’t hear them on the radio like you used to.

The best part of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, and I could argue its sole reason for existing — the coda — which doesn’t begin until six minutes and twenty two seconds into the song.

If and when a young person hears this song, it will only be the coda. In its brief life it contains multitudes and will surely rocket the tik-toker brave enough to use it in a video (tik-tok?) to instant tik tok fame. It is so beautiful it could make a grown man cry and dance simultaneously. Because it is a release. It is the summit. It is nirvana.

What happens when you get all of the juice without the squeeze? The context has been flipped. The tectonic plates have shifted. The future may as well be in the past. The shortcut has been accessed. But we are here now. At the end. And it feels so good.

This is a call to arms. Pick up a guitar, turn it to eleven and write a twelve minute song. Buy some new pants you may feel uncomfortable in, but maybe don’t throw away the tight ones, your kids are going to love them.

This week I have started and put down two books. I read sixty pages of The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Letham and I felt my body get physically weaker and weaker with each turn of the page. It is fluffy and not for me. And The Langoliers by Stephen King. I may come back to this one, but it is just not falling in line. If you are reading something great please let me know.