Pat reaches out to the new residents of an old address.
Pat reaches out to the new residents of an old address.
Check out more music by Caleb at CG Blue on Spotify
Research Notes:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103197913330
Hey, this is Pat. And this is a letter to no one.
I saw a picture once of a postcard that was sent to random address. The postcard reads, “I used to live in your house, I'm Drunk in Boston, and it’s the only address I Know. Happy Holidays.” Now I’m not drunk and I’m not in Boston, but yours is one of the addresses that will always stick in my mind.
So how is the old place? Is it still that bizarre shade of yellow? Do you find glass in the basement from when we used to huck bottles at the walls? Do neighborhood kids still try to break the windows with rocks on the way home from school? Do the nicotine soaked walls still reek of bad decisions?
I grew up in that house. Oh there’s my childhood home that I grew up in as well, but I continue to return there and make new memories every year. It was the first place that was really mine.
With this house – your house I suppose, though it feels odd to say that – I have just a single crystallized moment in time. A whirlwind two and a half year stretch where we lived with reckless abandon; hedonism taking precedence over work, school, and basically any semblance of responsibility we had at the time.
And yet even as I look back wistfully at those memories I hold so precious, I know that I certainly must be romanticizing them. I know I was scared and stressed out during those times as well. Hell, I know for a fact that I was quite well and depressed for most of my life and those years are no exception, but I can’t help but look back fondly at them.
But why is that? What is with that gentle filter of nostalgia that takes all the sharp edges off our pasts and makes us gaze wistfully into the distance and sigh as we remember? The type of nostalgia I’m describing is almost certainly a product of the extremely fallible nature of human memory viewed through the lens of a form of cognitive bias known as “rosy retrospection” wherein one recalls the past more positively than it was actually experienced.
Studies measuring this phenomenon are somewhat mixed as with many psychological studies, but many seem to suggest that we do tend towards remembering things as being better than how we actually felt about them in the moment and while the negative emotions are remembered as well, they are not magnified in the same way as our positive feelings about the past. (Except of course in the cases of those with “blue retrospection” who experience the inverse effect)
In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology titled “Temporal Adjustments in the Evaluation of Events” researchers found through multiple studies that their subjects’ expectations and later recollections of various personal events were more positive than their experience during the event itself. The researchers theorized that the increase in negative emotions during the event could be linked to disappointment based on their own expectations as well as a less positive overall view of the self in general. But within days after the event, people seem to forget or downplay those issues they had at the time, instead recalling the experience as much more positive than they initially reported.
So is looking backward the only way for us to view our lives positively? Why do our minds seem so hellbent on having the actual present experience of life be the part that’s difficult and painful while gilding the memories afterward? Maybe that’s why we have so many damn coming of ages stories in our culture. Every other movie or tv show seems to be about a kid growing up and learning how to be the sort of person they want to become or a twenty something moving to the big city and navigating the treacherous first few steps into adulthood.
We seem to have a fascination with these stories, these times in our lives when it feels like the greatest amount of required change is thrust upon us violently and without remorse. In these stories the protagonist is still on the precipice of that change, still chasing their dream. Anything is still possible.
Even for those of us who claim to be satisfied with our lives, we all have to come to terms with the reality in which we live and in the process often give up on many of the fantastical dreams we may have had as children. So perhaps returning to those stories and the feelings we associate with our own memories is a special sort of comfort.
Perhaps that accounts for some of my feelings about your house as it is intrinsically connected to a time in my life when I was, or at least I now perceive myself to have been, still so full of potential. Full of dreams and of hope.
A few years ago when I was passing through Boston on some trip or another I made some time to stop by the old place. Just to see how it was doing I suppose. Check that this ramshackle monument to my own memories was still standing.
I grabbed a few ‘gansetts from a nearby convenience store and set myself up on the hill in the park that overlooks the old place. You know the one I’m sure. During what was dubbed a “snowpocalypse” or “snowmageddon” in the winter of 2014-2015 we went out in the middle of the night to sled down this hill as more and more snow piled up. Soon other folks from the neighborhood around the park began to join us. Mostly college students from one school or another, some we knew and some we didn’t. At around midnight we all got notifications on our phones that school was cancelled the next day. The hill erupted into cheers as we passed around a bottle someone had stashed in the snow as we sledded.
I thought of that night and many others as I sat on that hill, staring at the old house, lost in my reminiscence.
I didn’t have those same sorts of feelings about any of my places in LA. Is that because I love it less than I love Boston? Or is it because of the distance I have now from those memories?
Well, even if they’re not the most accurate, I can’t help but be grateful for the fog of time polishing off the grime of what was surely an emotionally mixed bag of an era. I cherish those memories now. The raucous parties, the concerts in the basement, even doing laundry by hand on the porch when our washing machine broke partway through a cycle or the entire summer we spent with no gas or hot water.
I can still close my eyes and walk back through that front door that was always unlocked. Walk past Mike’s room on the first floor with music always pumping out through the door and into the ramshackle kitchen, the knobs on the stove often removed for parties so the house wouldn’t fill with gas. The doorway from the kitchen into the living room with its frame ripped to shreds at the top from where we made a habit of reaching up and opening our beers with the lip of the doorframe. The living room with its mismatched rugs, gross couches, and the secondary full size fridge that was in there for some reason that we never questioned and simply used for beer.
Turning around and walking back through the kitchen, past Mike’s room and back towards the front door to turn up the stairs with its rickety wrought iron banister. It was on those stairs that at some party we were having a friend of mine stopped me and asked if I was in love with the girl I had been seeing. I hadn’t said the words to her yet. And I hadn’t said those words romantically to anyone since my high school girlfriend. My eyes filled with tears as a lump rose in my throat. It was all I could do to simply nod, grinning like a fool as my chest swelled fit to burst.
People are more important than place. I know that for sure. Surrounding yourself with loving, funny, and supportive friends and family is absolutely paramount. But place is still pretty damn important. And your house, this house, was finally what I always wanted a home to be. Somewhere that was simply the default spot for everyone to come and hang out. There was always beer in the fridge, weed tucked away somewhere, and open couches or a spare bed if it got too late, leading to its nickname of Hotel 75. It was the sort of place that’s ubiquitous on TV shows. It was Foreman’s basement. It was Jerry’s apartment. It was truly the place you could go where everybody knows your name.
Having a home where you’re comfortable and feels truly yours is irreplaceable and should be held dear while you have it.
I hope one day it can become just as much a vessel of memories for you as it is for me.
Maybe we can have a beer on that hill and swap stories about it together someday. Or maybe I’ll just send you a postcard for the holidays.
*Outro*
This has been a letter to no one. If you think it’s about you, no it isn’t.
Our music is by Caleb Grant. Thank you Caleb. Artwork by me. Special thanks to Adam Sloves. Links to sources and research materials are in the show notes. Thank you for listening. Goodnight.