#instead of tanking in the winter like most people who have seasonal affective disorder my mental health tends to tank in the summer

[laurelwinchester]

man i hate summer

[s-o-n-de-r]

Years in transit: Against the Current in Boston and a reflection on music, moods, and seasons

Note: Rarely, I opt to publish personal pieces in place of sonder’s traditional editorial content. With this, however, I wanted to revisit a show I already wrote about in an expansive retrospective that deals with music journalism and auto-biographical elements. Thanks for reading - Andrew

If you’re a regular sonder reader, you probably noticed something out-of-place last November when, out of the blue, I published features from a show in Boston that pop-rock band Against the Current played. Boston? Weird, considering sonder is based in south Florida, and that’s where the majority of the site’s content comes from. Right?

Actually, despite being sun-soaked for the past 17 years, I have northern blood running in me. Massachusetts is my home; roots I can’t ignore. I grew up in a small town called Grafton, toward the center of the state. Grafton is the epitome of small town, pacified New England: Quiet, wooded, outskirt suburbia rolls over a few creeks bridged by old stone masonry to our town center, a picturesque square with a gazebo, new stores in old buildings, and one of the local churches. 

The Grafton part of my life feels like a long time ago. It mostly just exists as dust and cobwebs filling rarely-explored corners in my memories. Scattered in those cobwebs are pieces of small town New England in the 1990s, a decade that already feels hauntingly distant, lost in the blurry whirlwind of time. My childhood home was a two-story house on a massive corner lot with a hill in the backyard. All that space and gradient land meant I got to have fun as a kid. When it was autumn, I’d sprawl across a pile of crunchy brown and orange leaves I had assembled from the side yard. When it was winter, I’d get to rocket down the back slope on a sled or build up little forts with the huge snow banks that would accrue. During summer, the air was so clear and refreshing. The family would go to Swirls and Scoops, the local ice cream place, or Art Bradish Snack Bar, the local cheap and tasty dinner indulgence. They still make the crispiest chicken sandwich I’ve ever had.

Summer was always so pleasant and mild, with rich greens cascading across lawns. There was a huge tree at the corner of our property, surrounded by a half-circle of piled stones (who knew who put these here?), and that was prime territory for hanging out with my friends. All these little details kind of tumble around in my head when I think of Grafton. I relish them. Chances are, you have your own set of memories like these, and once in a while you might come upon them and bathe in their familiarity and warmth. Because that’s what nostalgia does – it comforts you, no matter if it’s accurate.

“It's been a minute

Everything's the same, but different”

Against the Current, “One More Weekend” / a song about re-visiting things and people in your past and tapping the well of nostalgia

After being transplanted from the north to the south in the middle of my childhood, I rolled with the punches (”the punches” being Florida). When you move from a place like Grafton – or, as I imagine, nearly any town defined by rich, varied culture – to the endless sprawl of southwest Florida, it’s a stark change of scenery. If Grafton was authenticity, then southwest Florida was shtick. In Grafton, we celebrate colonial history. In Fort Myers, we celebrate developing condos.

The mental weight of these differences on me never really showed up until my trips back to my home town in recent years when I realized, almost all at once, how much I missed it. Of course, that’s unsurprising. I was nine when we moved, and as a kid, you’re generally not acutely aware of how huge life changes like that can affect you on a deeper level. I was just sad that I had to leave my small number of friends.

But, I realized later the old cliché of “home is where the heart is” screamed in my face. Cliché, as it turns out, is overused for a reason. Who would have thought? I didn’t realize until my young adult years that, while I have many pleasant memories of New England, I had next to no similar memories in Fort Myers. In Fort Myers, no matter how hard I tried, nothing felt as close and tight-knit as things did in Grafton. Most of my good memories in Florida are, rightfully, from concerts I’ve been to or photographed.

Despite the build-up, there isn’t some overly dramatic point to be made here. Florida is where sonder has been built. It’s where I run into people at shows who recognize me and chat with me. It’s where I’ve met all my peers in concert photography. It’s where you, my readers, have said you like what we do. It’s where everything happens for this site. There’s a couple blocks in downtown Orlando, stretching from The Social to Backbooth, where sonder has basically been nurtured. I could recite half the restaurants and bars in that area and probably identify which brick goes where. It’s where I’ve photographed and interviewed bands for years.

That’s a general rule of thumb, anyway. Sometimes, when I get bad wanderlust, I end up far away. The most extreme example of this was when I was traipsing around the east coast for 13 total dates of Vans Warped Tour 2012. Going to many Warped Tour shows during the same year means you get to explore the detail in what that tour does, and it was in Connecticut when I met up with a young band named Against the Current. They weren’t playing. They were just hanging out. And it was during their early days: They were still a five-piece and only had one song (“Thinking”) and a cover out under their own name (both released the same day). I met them all, but spent most of my time talking to singer Chrissy Costanza before leaving, knowing that, at the very least, it would be a long while before I saw them again. The debut song was good. Good enough to get a footing, anyway, although in retrospect, you can really tell how the band has progressed. But this is the case for pretty much any new band, isn’t it?

Despite those glitches in the Matrix, Florida is mostly where sonder operates. But Florida could never come close to the feeling I feel from Grafton, or from Massachusetts in general. I have a love for the whole region. The northeast. New England. Etc. Amazingly, though, I had never really been to the seat of what makes New England, New England: Boston.

I wanted to change that last summer when I was spending a lengthy amount of time in Massachusetts on vacation (and, incidentally, feeling intimately re-connected to my home). So, being the day tripper I often am, I got a ride to the local MBTA station (our commuter rail, referred to as “The T”) and took a train to the coastal metropolis for the day. I watched my home roll by me in a blur as I explored Paramore’s self-titled album, and now, whenever I hear the positive chords of “Daydreaming,” I think of that trip. Cheerfully apt. And now, cherished.

It was one of those pleasant New England summer days, right in the dead of tourist season, so there was a lot going on. I ate, had a beer in the oldest tavern in America, visited the Holocaust memorial, and took lots of photos, as I often do. I didn’t seek much out. Instead, I let the atmosphere come to me instead – a mark of the fly-on-the-wall behavior in me that’s part nature, part journalistic nurture. My goal for that day was to get to know the place, even just a little. It was just a day, though, and I didn’t think I’d be returning for a long time.

I went back to Florida. Summer ended, but before I knew it, a family emergency had brought me back up in mid-November – the first time I was returning during fall since I was a little kid. The first shock I had was at 5:30 a.m. in the parking lot of a hotel in Delaware. It was 32 degrees outside, I had my tank top on from the previous day (because it was around 85 when we left Florida), and I was dying just to get into the car and hit the seat warmer button. Brr. I blame Florida for thinning my blood. I always blame Florida. Smooth.

See, part of the chaos in my head that Florida has nurtured is inability to cope with non-sunny weather. Even in Florida, I’m the type of person who will be in the dumps all day if I wake up and it’s raining. I’m embarrassingly sensitive to this stuff. And it’s because I’ve lived most of my life in a place that, for the most part, just shines.

So you can see potential problems about returning to Massachusetts during the tail end of fall. Which, don’t get me wrong, I was enthusiastic to see. It had been 17 years since I had seen a proper autumn, with leaves falling off of the trees and forests turning into splotches of brown and orange. We were going up toward the end of the season, so the vivid colors were less common, but some of it was still around. And just this change of pace and scenery allowed me to reconnect more with my New England nostalgia, something I desperately wanted. As of late, I feel like I’ve been floating through a perpetual identity crisis, so feeling connected to who I really am was cathartic. And there is some innate soul nourishment in New England autumns, from going to apple orchards to feeling the crisp, cool air to finding a cup of hot chocolate the most relaxing thing at the end of the day.

Rural Massachusetts under the cover of late autumn

Florida is a land of perpetual daytime and perpetual bloom. Even in December, our days are long, hot and super sunny. Now, me and my sensitive little self were heading straight into color-drabbed cold bookended by perpetually-encroaching darkness.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of seasonal affective disorder (the “S.A.D.” acronym is just life smiling down at us), here’s the crash course: It’s a psychological thing where the shorter, darker, colder days of winter basically hit the “on” switch for temporary depression. Now, remember those bits about how Florida doesn’t prepare you for different weather and how sensitive I am?

Yeah. Connect the dots.

The first day we got to Douglas (the rustic town where we were staying, not far from Grafton) after our drive up, I fell asleep at around 10 p.m., which is a record for a recovering night owl. I collapsed straight into a deep, blunt sleep, and when I woke up at around 9:30 a.m. the next day, I barely had any energy. H-E-L-L-O, S.A.D.

This is all a little gloomy and is partly exaggerated for the sake of narrative. But, you know, if I can deal with Florida for 17 years, I can deal with some blues for the week I was there. That week, by the way, happened to criss-cross with the touring schedule of Against the Current, who would play their very first show of their latest headlining tour in no place other than Boston. I didn’t even realize the coincidence until I was already up in Massachusetts, and if I wasn’t catatonic, it probably would have excited me more.

As you know, I first met them in 2012, and here I was four years and some months later, ready to see them headline a tour in support of their first album on a label. A lot happened in those four years – again, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing them for a while after my first meeting, but it was in late 2014 when they finally came down to the sunshine state.

I brought my camera to that show and have since managed to see them at every show in Florida they’ve played – sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. But always happily. There’s a decent amount of bands who receive repeat coverage on sonder, and generally it’s because I have a sense of admiration for those bands, but Against the Current are a little different. The combination of being there at the beginning (or nearly the beginning), having met and spoken to them enough times, genuinely enjoying their music and keeping up pace with photographing their shows, has instilled a sense of stewardship in me. And they were part of the inaugural class on sonder – sonder had existed in several different forms over the years prior to 2014, but 2014 is when it really coalesced and defined itself. At this point, having photographed them at nearly every Florida show (including a non-show – a standalone meet and greet), plus up in Boston, I feel the part of a documentarian, at least partially, and that compels me to follow them through to wherever they go. When I see the band playing to festival crowds in the U.K., or opening to 20,000 people on One OK Rock’s bill, or surrounded by thousands during a Q&A in the Philippines, I think back to that first meeting and bubble with pride.

With all this in mind, the opportunity to cover them in Boston, on opening night, was something I just didn’t want to miss.

So, on a dreary Thursday, I found myself once again on the T heading to Boston, again watching Massachusetts roll by.

Eastbound to the coast

Getting ready every day of that week was an effort. I woke up each morning in a gray catatonia, and that Thursday was no different. I let the hot water of the shower toast me because it was nice insulation against the encroaching cold outside. I slowly packed my bag because the blues were making me run at about 30 percent efficiency, and I had to zone in on every little thing I was doing to make sure I didn’t run out of energy halfway through. On the way to the Grafton T station, I got a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which is basically the state drink of Massachusetts. I sat there, relatively calm, and learned that the train was delayed, which didn’t cause as much anxiety as I thought it would.

Almost instinctively, I reached for Paramore when it arrived and enjoyed the tunes again. But this time, it was cold, bleak, and I had a lot on my mind. The weight of the seasonal depression acted as an emotion inhibitor, stripping away the intense anxiety I typically have before a concert and rendering everything neutral. A few ups. A few downs. But I felt way more level than I normally do. And level is a bizarre state of mind for me, as my mental states usually aren’t restrained; they usually catapult wildly from one spectrum to the other without apology. And feeling level is striking considering my struggle with anxiety and that I had no idea if I would even make the last train home – something that, in previous years, I wouldn’t be able to reconcile and would have shut the whole trip down.

Much of my mental workouts earlier in the week revolved around processing all the bleakness that was swirling around. There was one particular day that I stared out at a dark, rainy Worcester through a crying hospital window and saw all the naked trees and cars sloshing through puddles. I don’t think there was a single time that week that I felt a bounty of energy – even when I drank coffee, it was more like “whatever, this is caffeine.” I’m helplessly in tune with metaphors manifesting themselves in real life – I can probably partly blame all the literature courses I’ve taken in my life, but more likely it’s about the lens of extreme emotionality I experience life through, feelings that I’ve never really been able to properly convey or dial back. So, for example, summer in New England is a time of liveliness, vividness and in my recent case, adventure. But fall is about that life and vigor petering out, settling down. I think about stuff like that religiously, and it’s probably a contributing factor to why I’m susceptible to S.A.D.

Regardless, what eventually poked through that shell of the seasonal depression that day was realizing I was photographing a band I admired on their opening night, in my home state, surrounded by my personal nativity, during an actual change of season.

Everything was different from Florida.

And that is powerful. Even with the S.A.D., I felt things that hadn’t stirred within me for a long time or just not at all. Being in my mid-20s, the fervor of the late teens and early 20s has died, and it’s easy to fall into relative normalcy and consistency. Which is fine, but sometimes you don’t experience things raw as often. On this day, everything was basically flying at me raw: I overdrank on coffee (and could actually feel it), so my bones felt electrified, and when I spend enough time outside in cool weather, it naturally energizes me. I ended up walking all the way from the center of the city to the Cambridge area because I had just downloaded Uber, had no idea how to use it, and couldn’t get it to actually call a ride. So as I walked, my mind raced, and I thought a lot about things in my life that had led up to that moment. I was taking in a part of the city I didn’t make it to last time, so it was new to me, heightening the sense of discovery. And in the back of my head, I prepared for the tone of how I would write about Against the Current for the fifth time and reflected on their youthful exuberance and open pushback against systematic norms, a message preceded by a long line of punk ethos – even if Against the Current’s musical style was glossier than your traditional punk band.

Walking through the city during autumn was different – for one, the scores of tourists were far less pronounced, and it being a Thursday afternoon, it was much quieter than my last venture. During that week, I was on a mission to find at least some vestige of colorful autumn vibrancy, and it hit me out of nowhere. I rounded a corner into a plaza, and suddenly, what I was seeking leapt out at me. No holds barred, either – rich reds, browns and yellows. Even the park grass was vivid. I took in for a few minutes because, in all likeliness, it will probably be many years before I see it again.

And I got a really nice view when crossing the Charles River into Cambridge – these views invigorate me and make me feel like just a small cog in our beautiful world, a feeling I embrace. I like insignificance. It keeps me grounded and objective and nurtures the fly-on-the-wall instinct.

Pretty much every normal circumstance I knew whenever I photographed a concert was replaced with something new, with the slight exception of the band itself. But even then, it was different, as Against the Current were touring in support of their debut LP, In Our Bones, for the first domestic, non-festival headlining tour of the record cycle. I felt a rush of life on my walk there, ironically born underneath the thick shell of temporary depression. For the record, the melancholy really tried to bring me down, but little did it know that I’m too good at discovering meaning in misery.

One thing that helped this night is the whole “addicted to travel” thing – interestingly, I’m the happiest when I’m tired and at the end of a 13-hour drive. That was, by the way, part of my reality when I first met Against the Current those years ago, and it’s why I never balk at long-distance anything. Not that an hour-long train ride is harrowing road travel, but I was pretty far from home and on my own. If something went wrong, I would have been stuck in the city overnight by myself. For the record, going for a day trip on public transportation by myself is something that, years ago, would have stirred up such violent anxiety that I wouldn’t even dare. Anxiety is one of those things that you suffer through that either gets marginally better over time or just bowls you over. More likely, both, at different times, but that’s not really here.

Like I said, it was dreary all day, and the days were short, so it was dark before it made sense to be dark. One of the luxuries of going to shows at 24 is being over 21, so to kill time between sundown and doors opening, I had a few beers. An hour later, I was there in line freezing (because I underdressed and have thin blood, i.e. the “I Blame Florida” thing), but it was then that I realized, “Hey, I’m cold, depressed and a little tired, but I’m somehow still quite happy.” The irony is that a mixed tempo like that is not what culture generally props up. People like to talk about highs and lows, but as if they’re separate, not existing in the same space. Because it’s easier to qualify. But I’m obsessed with the gray that exists between black and white, and the tendency toward exploring subtlety is what drives my passion for this very site. It made sense for me to be both melancholic and happy in that moment – in fact, it made more sense than a lot of other things that go on in my head. By this point, cognizant of what was happening (again, I’m painfully self-aware), I let the feeling steep within me because I knew it would be helpful in a weird way.

The show was a textbook example of a good time. It took place in an almost literal den of comfort, a basement under a bar where the shared body heat of everyone kept the space toasty and insulated from the brisk autumn on the ground level. When I close my eyes and remember that night, I relish in the community of music and how comfortable I felt even though I was there by myself and far from home. I knew no one there except the performers, but I had been “there” before, absorbing the atmosphere and culture that comes with club shows. This is one thing you will never feel at an arena show, even if every single person in that basement room was there with you.

Even better, it was a photographer’s dream – never before have I experienced such helpful and bright front lighting. You could see people’s faces! Amazing!

I fly-on-the-wall’d myself pretty hard, keeping quiet and getting a sense for the venue and eventually just sticking toward the side of the stage for Against the Current’s set and taking photos for the entire hour or so. That photo above, by the way, is one of the very few I have framed to capture both the band and their fans. I like to look at photos like those and scan faces, try to get in the heads of people through their expressions. There’s admiration and excitement. And it’s a reminder of when I was that kid, right up in the front row – music journalism was always a natural segway from me, to transition from being in the crowd to trying to explain why it matters. Because that’s 100 percent something I believe in: That the alternative music and community matters, and that belief is pretty much the foundation for sonder.

More to the point (an interesting choice of phrasing considering we’re thousands of words in), as I discussed in the premiere feature on the night, this was one of the finest times to see Against the Current because In Our Bones really got to breathe. There was also this interesting moment when the band broke out into a cover of “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance and reached backwards in music history to a song off an album that defined a generation. I found myself singing along to this one more than the band’s own songs, not because I’m a massive fan of MCR or not that familiar with Against the Current’s songs, but because the song is that catchy and significant.

Anyway, as the star of the night, they played most of In Our Bones, which is good pacing for the band. I’m a perennial hipster in this regard – in all the years I’ve been watching music, I often yearn for the earlier days of bands’ careers when they get to play most of their catalog. This is because it’s so more likely they’ll explore deep cuts, and anyone that’s a well-versed fan of a band knows the deep cuts are often what give you your sense of relation to the group. For Against the Current, deep cuts mean “Fireproof” (from Gravity), any of their older covers or a song such as “Something You Need” off of Infinity.

This would be one of my favorite live concert shots if the focus wasn’t off ever so slightly. That being said, it’s still a photo I enjoy a lot. I love catching performers lost in what they’re doing, when the true enjoyment really comes out. It’s a rare example of an on-stage shot that captures both the essence of the performance and a sense of intimacy.

Infinity, for the record, is the defining moment for my own experience with Against the Current. Infinity was the product of years of waiting. When the band released “Thinking,” I gave it some coverage and waited for what felt like forever for the band to get an actual record out. Then, oddly, I didn’t even pick it up at first. When I did, it hit me like a blockbuster. Infinity is one of my favorite collection of pop-rock songs in existence – it really shows the cohesion of Against the Current’s individual members. It goes for a big, booming, almost arena-ready sound and hits it out of the park. Will Ferri’s drums are explosive. Dan Gow’s guitar work is crisp, and he has a knack for delicious, spirited hooks and leads. Chrissy is youthful and owns the poppy nature of these songs. Vocoder effects and layered secondary instruments are drizzled into these songs and give them a shot of depth. These songs reek of penultimate youth and love; in my initial review of it, I said that they would be the perfect choice for a contemporary remake of Fast Times At Ridgemont High, and I still stand behind that. The classic and timeless nostalgia of things such as summer break and young love are embedded into Chrissy’s intonation and lyrics. And the duo of Dan and her aren’t just cohesive – they positively feed and flow from each other; the two detonate together, guitar leads blasting to uppity choruses that she soars into. I listen to and cover many bands for sonder, and it’s only once in a blue moon that you find debut records cut so skillfully, even rarer that they’re instant classics. Part of the magic was also the cooks in the kitchen: Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount, who are responsible for some of the most timeless pop-punk records ever (Mayday Parade’s A Lesson In Romantics, Cartel’s Chroma, All Time Low’s Put Up Or Shut Up), were the production brains for this record. Infinity was an awakening for me, a collection of songs that lit a fire in me, something not too common in my music consumption as of late.

Some years ago, I had a Nissan Altima (my first car) that my brother and I installed a sound system in. It had an amp and a sub that really kicked, and it was around the time when Infinity first came out. I would drive around town and crank it almost to the max, relishing in the explosive tones, bass, and energy in these songs. Just five songs, but I had the album nearly on repeat. It was a pleasant getaway to peter around town taking in these songs that felt eternally vibrant.

Back to the show: Even as it was happening, that nagging feeling of woe that had been wafting inside my head for the week kept at it, regardless of stubborn pockets of resisting happiness. In what’s perhaps a desired curse, such melancholy intensifies my fly-on-the-wall instinct. Sort of like this: Oh, wow. Look at everyone enjoying themselves. That would be nice. But I know I couldn’t fully immerse myself in that feeling, so I’ll just document it.

Actually, regardless of hilariously inept mental state, I generally purposely distance myself from being in the middle of fandom because it helps sharpen my editorial eye and maintain subject/journalist separation. But I love seeing others experience fandom. Of course I enjoy concerts. But I also flirt with classic objectivity, so I try to observe more than engage. At the same time, considering the long history I have of observing Against the Current, it’s hard to not feel some sort of wistfulness, to root for them. I find this to be a fundamental paradox in music journalism, kind of in the vein of the observer effect in science: By covering a band, you naturally draw closer to them. After all, when music comes across my desk to review or cover or take photos of, something about it needs to be an experience I enjoy or, at the very least, is something I can convince myself others will enjoy. But it’s so much easier to do good music journalism when you care about what you’re covering, least of all because the closer you get, the more intimately you know the music and will be able to talk about it better.

This conundrum reflects part of the core experience of music – the fact that, at base level, it is an emotional experience, and the more you cover a particular band, the harder it is to divorce yourself from that emotion. Covering a press conference is fairly straightforward. Covering music is wading waist-deep in the emotion of the moment and trying to come out without feeling heartbroken, happy, enthused, motivated, or any of the very emotions the musicians are trying to convey. How is that a sensible process? I mean, I just spent a whole paragraph raving about the band’s debut album. How would I have reviewed that music without getting in the weeds and not getting grass shavings on my socks? I’m not saying it’s impossible or that it’s even hard to take a step back from an emotional experience with music in order to write objectively, but I think there’s room for thoughtful, impactful music journalism that is both informative and emotive.

If you haven’t realized it, the concept of internal conflict is wreaking havoc throughout this piece. Happy v. sad. Past v. present. Childhood v. adulthood. Objectivity v. emotion. But, like I said earlier, it isn’t actually stark, distinctively separate differences that define our experiences. It’s often the nuanced in-between that makes actual sense. We yearn for the distinct, so it is often hard to confront the gray area that’s actually behind most things. This is, at its core, one of the uplifting thing about music – it has this ability to override things and dunk you into environments, sort of like the memory triggers I talked about in the beginning of this piece. Theoretically, anyway. Have you ever had a really bad day, but masked the negativity by reminding yourself there’s a show you’re going to see soon? That thought is merely a root. Dig it up, and it leads to so much more. This is part of the magic of music. It’s a reverberation of some of the psychological phenomena that defines the human experience, and most of the time, this effect can be in full blast, and we don’t even realize it. Music reaches so deeply into the human experience in an animalistic way. It floods into you. Remember: I can listen to “Daydreaming” and somehow, in my mind, be transported back to that train to Boston, even though I’m physically in my room thousands of miles away. I’m sure you have a song like this. And chances are, if you listen to a song you heard a lot growing up, you’ll feel traces of a memory from your childhood. This is why it seems so difficult and nonsensical to strive after true objectivity in non-hard news music journalism, and this is also why people who make the effort to be actively negative about bands seem pretty dull.

Part of the mission of sonder has been to bring the inward reflection that has made this piece (and all of music) possible to your brains in a percolated way, to try to unravel the machinations of why bands make you feel certain ways. As far as Against the Current goes, despite writing about them half a dozen times, I still haven’t fully grasped what it means to hear them. I’m confident I can bring a piece of them to you every time I write about them, but I’m not sure if that piece is even a fraction as meaningful as what it’s like to be in the room. To be in that Boston basement where the sonic energy is floating around the room, rushing through everyone, making strangers into friends. It’s kind of like that blunt feeling you get after a good movie when the credits roll and you walk out awash in the emotion of what you just saw. It’s non-transferrable, but other people who were there get it.

Probably my best photo of the entire band all in the frame at once. Unfortunately, it’s tough to get everyone in focus when you’re dealing with long focal lengths and the wide apertures used for dark settings, but this is genuine Against the Current.

The discomforting thing about this is that writing about music is impossible. You know how the very notes and structure of instrumentals (let’s not even talk about vocals and lyrics) can make you feel something intense, something that, despite your best efforts, you just can’t relate to another human being? As in, “the tone of this guitar lead makes me remember the feeling of when I was 16 in Ohio in July falling in love” or “this keyboard riff puts me right back in downtown Orlando seeing a friend I haven’t seen in years and laughing at his joke” or whatever other combination of specific emotions you get from music that you can’t relate? Writing about music is like sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “la la la” to that; to boldly be stupid. But I try anyway because it’s so unifying, and because it means something to me, too. Again: Why fully divorce yourself from the emotion?

This story wouldn’t have been as cohesive if even one part of the situation was different – if it wasn’t Against the Current, if it wasn’t Massachusetts, if it wasn’t autumn. Which is a little weird because, on the surface, none of those things seem integral to the narrative, until you acknowledge that these things are all influenced by my emotional interpretation of them, and that this interpretation is part of the same human experience that makes music so intense. The seasonal fluctuation of New England, if you haven’t realized, is the absolute catalyst going on here, not because it has some sort of intellectual significance, but because it goes straight to the core of who I am as a person. It’s something I experienced in my youth, didn’t experience for 17 years, then was suddenly dunked back into. It sounds silly, but I was surrounded by who I am. And then the band was the topping to that because, damn it, I haven’t managed to maintain objectivity about them, and I personally care about them and their career. How couldn’t I? Has this ruined a sense of objectivity? Does this make my words here cheaper?

In March of 2015, the Nissan Altima, with its nice sound system, became a heap of twisted metal after a reckless driver pulled right out in front of me despite having a blind spot. I crawled out of the wreck with, luckily, nothing but a broken clavicle. Later that year, after I was healed up but still didn’t have another car to drive, I posted an article on sonder highlighting bands we wanted to see on Vans Warped Tour 2016. Chrissy randomly replied to it and asked if I was going to be at their upcoming Orlando show. When I responded and told her I had gotten in an accident and wasn’t sure if I could make it, she sent her well wishes and said she hoped to see me there. It was out of the blue, appreciated (during a time when my mood was in the gutter) and one of the things that cemented the bond I feel for the band.

Chances are, you have your own version of Boston or Against the Current, something that means something to you because it intertwines with your history in a meaningful way.

I did not manage to slow down very much for most of that day. The only way I made it back to South Station for the very last train back into Grafton was thanks to leaving the exact second Against the Current finished playing “Gravity” and getting into an Uber, since the app actually decided to cooperate. At that point, I got to see Boston float by at night, gleaming under the rain, and there was this tune that crept into my head – a tune I first became familiar with a few years ago, a tune that I have a deep emotional connection to. It’s a connection that I can’t explain very well, for the reasons I’ve outlined. No – it’s not Against the Current or Paramore or a band from years ago. It’s by a band named Transit (an apt name for this story).

It is “Young New England,” and it has become a part of how I filter and process my past. It’s managed to bring me closer to my home, even when I’m in Florida. It’s a folksy drinking song, but it’s not just that. A few lines repeat through the song:

Oh, Young New England.

Over and over again, Young New England.

New England, in a photo.

When I first got into this song, I played it on repeat like people often do when they find a song they like. But I didn’t get bored. I kept playing it. I was driving home once from a show in West Palm Beach. It was the dead of night, and I was taking the roads through the middle of the state, so I was basically alone on the roads, creeping through Florida’s desolate, sad sugar roadways. And I must have played “Young New England” 10 or 15 times in a row. I have heard those notes so many times, and over time, I attached part of myself to them, part of my youth and love of New England. So now, those feelings are inseparable. Go listen to it. You won’t feel those feelings. You might not even like it. And, that’s part of the struggle of what I do on sonder. I listen to the song when I want to feel at home. It’s a cradle. But you probably won’t get that.

I was exhausted by the time I got back home, but unlike earlier in the week, I had re-gained some motivation and mojo. I was wiped out, but it was underscored by being fueled by doing what I love to do. It helped that I got some of my best photos of the band that night.

I thought hard about how I wanted to end this piece, but there are so many moving parts and tangential discussions that it seems impossible to tie it up. And more to the point, a wishy-washy, up-beat “and here’s why all this matters!” ending would be a disservice to the grayness clouding most of this piece. In a short word, the psychology of nostalgia and memory is fascinating to me, and being as awkwardly self-aware as I am fueled this. This piece began as impulses in my mind maybe three months after the show, but it took me a while to get it down on the page and flesh it out. Even then, though, I had the feeling that that night in Boston had been important to me on a deeper level. Hell, I might have even known that the night of, and it just took a while to uncover it.

If there really is a bigger picture here, it has to do with how and why sonder operates the way it does. After all, Against the Current, the other bands we cover, our Orlando HQ, our home town – these are insignificant details to you, but they’re part of our identity. The theory behind sonder wouldn’t change if you swapped these elements out, but the character would. And that’s, of course, because emotional connection to everyday things affects everything. And I just hope that, even if you don’t identify with mine, you have your own and you never let anyone belittle that or take it away.

Because the things that define you aren’t just things out there in the world – they’re your things, pieces of the world that you turn into a home.

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Article, photos, and excessive self-reflection by sonder editor Andrew Friedgen. Like this? Sonder is an independent music, travel and photography publication at sonderlife.com. Give us a follow here or at our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook if you like this!