Sidewalken

Alvvays’ Belinda Says is the first song in ages that makes me deliberately drive more slowly so I can hear it all before I get home. I’m sure I look pretty silly as I sing along to the “See how it goes … See how it grows” bit but at least I’ll be providing some humour to whoever sees me.

A dumb thing: before I really listened to the lyrics I assumed the Belinda of the title was Belinda Butcher from My Bloody Valentine.

He stands by the door, all ready to go — 250 yen in his left pocket, bus fare, and 550 yen in his right, which is for the subway. He knows he should probably get one of those cards that you can just tap through and not have to juggle handfuls of change. If pressed, he’d find it hard to explain why he hasn’t. The bus he had hoped to be on passes.

I made it through a week or so without having Calendar Days playing on repeat in my head.

It’s back now, especially the verse that goes “There’s a kind of quiet. A fighter jet’s applause. They’re all saw toothed fragments. Scattered in an empty hall.”

I used to be very into audiobooks. I mostly listened to them while taking walks around the neighbourhood. It has been yonks since I listened to an audiobook. Not for any particular reason — just a thing that happened. Same thing for podcasts.

I have very clear locational connections between certain places in my neighbourhood and books I listened to well over a decade ago. Whenever I pass them, the voices of the narrators bubble up in my head. A corner I used to round on my way to work still puts me in mind of Dune. A temple a little up the mountain reminds me of Ender’s Game. And then there’s the park in the pictures here. This is totally the Pattern Recognition park. Walking there today, so much came came back to me — the Footage, Cayce’s Buzz Rickson jacket and the filed-down buttons on her Levis.