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The “Psychic Colors” That Make Our Memories
Thirty years ago, I discovered Sunny Day Real Estate while watching MTV’s 120 Minutes late one Saturday night. I saw the video for “Seven” and immediately fell in love with the Seattle band, rushing out as soon as I could to pick up their debut album Diary on black cassette, the norm for Sub Pop at the time. Over the years, I’ve been able to see them perform in support of The Rising Tide in 2000 and twice over the past year at Furnace Fest and recently in Georgia. As I watched them the most recent time, I kept thinking about being in the moment, enjoying the show instead of trying to film every moment. I kept thinking about the past, picking up Diary and then LP2 and then their breakup and then their getting excited for their reformation a fews years later and How It Feels to Be Something On and The Rising Tide.
Standing there watching Sunny Day Real Estate my mind, as it is wont to do now, started to think about memory and the past. I thought about the ways we construct memory, shaping and molding it to fit us and our feelings about ourselves. I thought about seeing Sunny Day Real Estate the first time in…
