this song is about reframing past love experiences

I have often compared concerts to religious experiences. This was not an exception. Sasha Sloan is my goddess. But, it was weird. It was weird in the sense that this is the first concert that I have paid for in over 6 months, and it feels weird that so much of my life has changed in these past six months. #abroad #changed #me

For one, I have upped my standards for what is considered to be a concert worth paying for. Gone are the days that I got to EDM concerts because I no longer see the value of paying for a couple hours of a guy playing his music on loud speakers with an occasional ad lib to fill the builds. Gone are the days that I would pay more than $20 for a concert because I no longer believe that the price of a concert is associated with the quality of the music nor that concerts ever should be priced in a way that is unaccessible to people who want it the most. It was a different time.

this is about understanding childhood trauma

Sasha Sloan is one of those artists that I listen to a lot. According to the last time I had checked last.fm, she was my second most-played artist this year. She only has two EPs out and a couple singles that she released with some DJs, so she doesn’t have that much material (at least, in relationship with the other artists I listen to). Since I had listened to her almost every day during my fall semester this, she holds a special place in my memories for being associated with the happiest semester of my life. I have also inadvertently memorized the choruses for all of her songs, and I do mean all 15 (?) of her songs.

I use to fantasize with my friends about the possibility of having the superpower to know every lyric to every song. It would make every concert or house party or Bar Mitzvah so much more entertaining. But, being the person that I am, I find it incredibly hard to memorize lyrics. I know some people who can just pick up a song after a couple of listens, but this had never been me. But, at this concert, this was the first time that I was able to experience this fantasy of mine, and I could honestly say that it was the most immersed I have ever been in a concert experience. And, as I yelled out the lyrics to all of these sad songs, I felt disassociated.

this song is about trying to feel normal

She has cool tattoos, and to a very large extent, I also want to embody that image that she gives off. I also wrote an essay about this recently — the aestheticization of melancholy. As an artist, she can only exist to me in an image, at least, until I become friends with her, but since that’s not happening anytime soon (or ever, if we’re anywhere except my version of the experience machine), I can only operate off the image that I have constructed around her, and her image is one of the relationship between sadness and love, which (surprise!) is something that I think about a lot on a regular basis.

I recorded a couple of her live performances, and I’m going to keep them on my phone for a while. It is one of those few instances when I take a picture that I actually know that I will look back on those pictures at a later date. This was a memory. This was a memory worth remembering, and I will continuously remember this memory because it is a reminder of other memories that I consider to be happy memories, and what is life but a constant yearning for those happy memories that are long past?

this song is about always running away