Isn’t it odd how one picture, a song, an Ad on TV or even a taste, can transport you to a specific moment in time? I imagine we all experience this from time to time. I saw the cover of a magazine in an article the other day, and it immediately transported me to 1999. It was instant and such a vibrant and robust memory. For the life of me, I can’t remember what I connected with but it all came rushing back.

The cover in question was a music magazine cover featuring a nu-metal act, Limp Bizkit’s frontman, Fred Durst. I always disliked this dude’s approach to music because it was just the rap/mush of nu-metal but Limp Bizkit did have a killer guitarist in Wes Borland and their sophomore effort was memorable. It had that track called “nookie”. Not the epitome of musical composition, but it was catchy in the nu-metal equivalent of the macarena.

I guess I made all of these connections almost instantly and suddenly I started remembering all of the bands that were getting heavy coverage back then, and then the movies, and then the car I had, the circle of friends back then and it just painted a perfect picture. I guess the most meaningful part of this is that I cannot relate with the person and reality I saw in this real memory of myself. Not one bit. Those friends? Many followed a different path, or perhaps it was me that started moving in a different direction. That music? It was all around me but I never played it, and never cared to emulate it. Where I lived, what I did for a living, what was seemingly my life path, all of it is entirely foreign to me now.

It’s bizarre. I want to kind of channel this moment again just to examine it, like an oddity. But I feel no attachment and no real need to “connect”. I am just an entirely different person with a kind of removed curiosity. But I think (think) it’s not a form of reminiscing, rather an almost academic kind of interest in how that person in that snapshot, turned into the one writing this. Ultimately the answer is always, time.