The irony of “Skyline To,” when Frank sings “This is joy, this is summer” while I reclaimed this album for myself in seven-degree weather, is one of those quiet thrills that keeps life worth living.Īs I shivered, questions from my first listen of the record were being answered. I could not feel my toes, but I could feel Frank Ocean’s heart cut through the dead of winter, right into mine. My breath clouded as I let out a sigh of relief after making it through “Solo.” Frank Ocean was becoming beautiful again, at least partly because falsetto and vocal pitching sound better when you’re freezing.
A few hours earlier, my now-girlfriend called to tell me she heard two wind chimes-two angels getting their wings. Transitioning from “Nikes” to “Ivy,” I realized my rip of the record had a pop of dead air between songs, which was immediately filled by the steely flutter of a wind chime. It was time to grow, to be like the river. With my iPod in hand, I trained my eyes on the water, huddled into my jacket, and played Blonde for the first time in over a year. Avoiding Blonde was my attempt at mitigating risk, but now I recognize avoiding the highs is a dangerous and fruitless attempt to avoid inescapable lows.Įasing myself into a semi-frozen plastic chair, I noticed that even while encumbered by huge sheets of ice, the flow of the Delaware River persisted. Nostalgia triggers the anxiety that I will never be as happy as I once was, that I will never realize I’m happy until it’s too late, and worst of all, that I’ll never be happy again. Living with depression, tuning into past happiness can be insidious. Hearing “Solo,” and seeing the apartment clear as day, I was overcome with the fear that my brightest moments were forever behind me. We laughed and loved like joy could cover rent. Every night I spent in that apartment-I was certain-was the best night of my life. I couldn’t make it past “Solo.” The first organ chord took me back to the brisk summer nights of 2016, passing a bottle of liquor between three other people in a cramped Bushwick three-bedroom. But up until January 1, 2018, listening to the entirety of Blonde felt insurmountable.ĭecember 2016 was the only other time I attempted a re-listen of Blonde.
While my worst moments are marked by an array of records, I can still revisit each of them without losing myself in the past. That is, I had never struggled to separate my own memories from the artwork. Before Blonde, I had never lost an album.
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