Residential Space

This is the most comfortable I have felt in a long time. To set the scene: I am sitting on the couch in my condo with my laptop where it belongs (on my lap). The only sources of light are a candle burning on the table next to me and a lamp that is on across the room. In the background I am savouring Radiohead’s OK Computer as I type, read, talk to my closest friend on the phone… The blinds are open, allowing the gorgeous light-speckled Seattle skyline into my living room. I could still be the girl in college, leisurely writing a term paper for my Ulysses course or chatting online with a fellow college disc jockey at 3AM, all the while Paranoid Android eminating from the stereo. How am I already 27 years old?

 

When I begin to feel nostalgic about my freshman year in college at the University of South Carolina, OK Computer is a reasonable listening choice. It was Adam Humphreys who introduced me to Radiohead during that pivotal year, 1997. He also introduced me to Samuel Beckett. That was the year I went to Atlanta at least four times for weekend academic team competitions and stayed with my friend James Sloan, at the time a freshman at Georgia Tech. Daniel Jones and I split the list of Nobel laureates in literature, and I memorized Ernest Hemingway (1954) through Dario Fo (1997). That was the year that I studied calculus with Brad Walters at the IHOP down the street, and it was the year that I began working towards becoming a physician (a goal that seemed so farfetched and futuristic at the time). That was the year I began reading about art and visiting galleries regularly. I remember the first time I saw Picasso’s The Three Musicians - at a special exhibition at The High Museum of Art –  and it seems like yesterday that James and I were trying to hail a taxi in the middle of the night after the MARTA had shut down. I remember my first alcoholic drink that year – with Evan and James, a Long Island Iced Tea, followed by a Kamikazi. I can recall the first time I saw Evan, in my chemistry recitation session, and then how excited I was that he was assigned the lab station across from mine. And I so easily recall that sense of independence I felt for the first time, living away from home, watching the sun rise as I discussed Atlas Shrugged with a group of suffering philosophy majors; of engaging in fierce debates at The Waffle House over whether The Smashing Pumpkins could be a good group despite their attempt to copy Nirvana’s style. For the first time in my life, I felt free, interesting, interested, attractive, and bold. I remember everything as though it were last week, and I cannot fathom how it was possibly so long ago. Am I going to be 40 before I know it?

 

Thanks, OK Computer.