Love & Nostalgia
romance and lost mp3 files
00:13 May 19th.
Going through old music, made mostly in the summer of 2023. I think this summer invigorated my love for music and creating with friends — especially you Phil. It set the bedrock of my artistry and messaging now — a hindsight moment since back then I felt much frustration from never actually finishing the projects I, we, commenced. Now it’s 2025. I have a finished project, music videos and live performances — but there’s something that I just can’t feel with these finished songs, these polished videos. It’s that rawness that comes with nostalgia. This is what I am investigating today. This, and love.
Summer of 23’ was also the summer of love. Romantic love. And with it, my highest peaks and lowest moments. Similar to how I feel about the music I made that summer — stories that never fully came to it’s desired fairy tale endings. Feelings I never truly lost. This is nostalgia. Memories are real and make up the very DNA that makes you, you. Memories are also figments of the imagination, ones that you cannot replicate and that remain confined in a storage unit, deep in some crevasse of your brain, until awakened. It’s tricky. Sometimes one isn’t ready to confront the baggage contained in the memory, sometimes it comes at an inopportune moment in your life. Perhaps you are starting to adopt feelings for someone else, perhaps you are tying latch on this album that you had such high expectations for. Memories are the vessels which transport nostalgia. Memories can be manufactured, altered, exaggerated — nostalgia cannot. Memories are the eyes and nostalgia the heartbeat.
Am I still in love — or am I just cosplaying Bruno in the summer of 23. If the former is true, surely the best thing to do is to step away from the act which is causing these feelings to remain, knowing where it has taken you in the past. Bury the book in the basement. I find this absurd, of course. I cannot hide something whose content has profoundly shaped the way I interact with the world, for better or for worse. That would be dishonest, and cruel — to so many. If it’s the latter, then I’ll do my best to never forget this feeling so that I can provide that comfort, that legitimacy, you (I) never internally accepted. What you felt had meaning, I am now certain of it.
Am I still in love. Am I still hurting. Have all the butterflies left my stomach and is the veil covering the sun that once shone on my heart so deeply, still there?
I am made of up flaws and they power me through every waking day. Perhaps this is why it’s so hard to let you go — to re-record each note in order to try and get a crisper sound that carries that same character as those recorded in my stuffy bedroom on 205 Mont Royal Avenue Ouest. My room changed decor every other week. Four boys under one roof, two messy hispanic musicians and two tidy French. Mountains of differences and yet we got along so well. Doors may as well have not been there, they were rarely used for their intended purpose. It was hot in the summer. A large window gave to the living room of a top floor apartment in a crammy graffitied building with no AC. Not an environment for me to finish anything. But that was okay. It was a playing ground for experimentation.
I criticise ignorance and yet I refuse to face you. I’m blissfully ignorant — hoping my heart will at some point belong to someone else without having to shut it from you. You’ve seen me walk the stage to get my diploma the day of my graduation. I had a new haircut — real buzzcut mullet moment (think the New Zealand rugby team). I sent you the link to the livestream even when you chose him over me. You watched in the park in secret while he lay by you. Secrecy was our love language and yet we both love so blatantly.
I say this with intensity as nostalgia has taken control. These are not things I think about daily. But neither do I with the lost mp3 files on my phone. And yet when I hit play, a world buried by my new daily responsibilities comes to life. A world of joy and sorrow.
I take pride in the fact that you are more than a memory. This is something I feel strongly about — in many spheres of my life. I will one day release this collaborative project I made with Phil. I will one day fall in love with someone else.