Early winter syndrome
That time of the year when we start remembering
Dear friends,
I tapped my greasy fingers aggressively on the phone’s screen, trying to unlock it.
The beat being blared from the pizzeria’s speakers was annoyingly familiar.
“It’s Destiny’s Child screaming Survivor into your ears. No need to Shazam it,” the friend casually dropped the fact as I was struggling.
“Geez, it’s been a while,” she continued. “I played this song non-stop during the summer when we entered the national university entrance examination.”
“Survivor! You get the idea?” she exclaimed while pulling the cheesy slide.
To me, Tình yêu màu nắng – the one hit wonder by Big Daddy and Đoàn Thuý Trang – was the white noise when I solved calculus practice problems in preparation for one of the defining events of my life.
In a podcast I forgot the name, the host suggested having a playlist composed of new songs which you would play when visiting a new land.
“So that for the rest of your life, whenever you hear those songs, you would recall memories from the trip,” he said.
The idea is beautiful although I have never adopted it.
Nostalgia should come organically, I suppose. A tune that happens to play at a moment will be a signifier to unlock the core memory sometime in the future.
I wear a piece of memory on my wrist. It’s a Timex Weekender. In Perfect Day, Lou Reed sang:
“Weekenders on our own.
It’s such fun.”
In a mental index card, it goes by:
Location: Hoàn Kiếm District Library
Time: Fall afternoon
Year: circa 2018
I remembered the mallard green windows on the mossy yellow wall of a nearby building.
People who were on that day are no longer in Hà Nội but I think of them anytime I heard the song being played, no matter in PlayStatition 4’s commercial or Wim Wender’s motion pictures.
A madeleine is soaked in tea.
Till next time,
T.
I joined a demo class on human-centered engineering at Fulbright University Vietnam Open Day and caused my team to lose. The two brilliant teenage teammates looked at me weirdly. Should I start taking old age as an excuse?
This week’s topics
A homage to Quang Vinh’s Tình yêu tìm thấy
Clarks & Tokyo with interesting camera angles
Hamilton by Phum Viphurit