sepatation anxiety

Yesterday afternoon I dropped my computer off at the Apple Store, after a twelve-hour day of outlines and classes and identification cards and hurricane watching and nothingness. My ongoing crisis of motivation continues, and the loss of my primary source of productivity and diversion comes a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, it affords me the opportunity to put some distance between myself and distraction; on the other hand, it separates me from the tool I've come to rely upon to create and write and organize my days away, stretching one after another towards an unknowable future, a future that seems less and less certain the closer it gets.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that my yin-in-law graciously loaned me her computer, which means that for the next 5-7 days I'm returning to the world of Windows and personal computing. So far the transition hasn't been too bad, and I've even been able to access some of the files from my Mac-formatted hard drive with a nifty (and clunky) third party software.

Also beside the point.

The point is that, using this particular utility, I couldn't help but feel like it was the summer of 1995 all over again when my parents bought me my first-ever computer, a P-75, from a CompUSA in Dallas. I was staying with my mother for six weeks in Plano, and I spent my days on the couch with my Korean-made Stratocaster (the "Koreacaster") playing along with CDs and MTV and the VCR and any other damn acronym I could find. There was a record store across town called Bill's, and I would drive there at least once a week to look for bootleg albums and break the monotony of 100-degree temperatures and the loneliness of knowing a town well enough to get around, but not well enough to strike up a conversation.

For whatever reason, the memory of that summer returns to me this morning. and looking back I know those months between May high school graduation and August collegiate matriculation mark a rite of passage for middle class adolescents. There is excitement and dread, opportunity and uncertainty... But most of all there is a profound loss of identity. One can no longer think of himself as a high schooler, he knows nothing yet of college life, and the title of "recent high school graduate" is far too fleeting and empty to provide much comfort.

Music, then as now, helps to make sense of these things...