weekend song | Ribs (+ the fear of growing old)

About every three or four days this summer, the Massachusetts heat would culminate in a thunderstorm. One night a week I'd roll the host stand inside and spend my shift in the dim, air conditioned bar.  A few days before my 27th birthday, Jesse (the bartender) put on this song from the Lorde album. it feels so scary getting old. 

For February (and most of 2013 really) I couldn't shake a feeling, somewhere deep inside me, that I was almost dead. Not as a metaphor ... in real, existential terms. Scientifically, a third of my life is almost over and aging, it will never never stop. 

For my whole life, I'd had this image of being 30. It was like a plateau. Time would pause. And all the things that I imagined for my life - the house with the built in bookshelves, pushing a stroller through the farmer's market - I'd live them. Around 50, time would start again. My hair would go gray. 

Because that's how it looked. That's how I saw my parents when I was a kid. They were constant, until one day they were old.  But, the closer I get to the meeting point (to the point when my memories start, to the first image of my parents) the more I feel certain that time was only constant for me back then. For them, it was hurtling by.  

I felt - and I have felt, for the last two years - that it was all already over. 

But this summer made me feel young again. It sounds so silly, but all those evenings spent standing on the patio in a pair of cut-off jean shorts returned me to myself. I owe the brewery and my friends there everything for that. They reminded me that there is something alive in me, something wild. 

(p.s) this is actually Lorde's favorite on the album | with a Broken Social Scene reference