#36
Bibio: “Excuses”
[from Mind Bokeh / Warp] 

Earlier this year, I moved from the house I had been living at in Portland to a new apartment not terribly far up the road. As it often tends to be, the move was a bittersweet one. While it was exciting to be taking over a new space that was full of possibilities, it was sad to render all of the experiences that I had shared with my friends and roommates into a memory permanently tattooed in the fabric of the carpets and the paint on the walls.

In the week leading up to the big moving day, I had developed a frighteningly annoying strain of the flu and found myself hacking up all sorts of bizarre shapes and colors while I carefully transported little boxes in between my old and new residences. I shared the last night I spent in the bedroom with nothing but my mattress, my laptop, a change of clothes and a large bag of sore throat lozenges. As I woke the next morning and began to get ready for all of the work ahead, I took in Bibio’s Mind Bokeh for the very first time. Within two minutes I was sitting on the floor in a trance as Stephen Wilkinson rattled off, “I didn’t hear the falling leaves and now they’re rotting underneath.”

Few things have the power to stop me dead in my tracks and shut me down entirely, but at that moment, that one line was all that it took. It’s good to get knocked down like that once in a while. We are all moving entirely too fast and working towards whatever is next on the agenda. Find the thing that makes you stop and think and hold onto it.

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