51. Explosions in the Sky “Postcard From 1952” Take Care, Take Care, Take Care [Temporary Residence]
Moment @ 4:00
Pictures of places she had never been were pinned haphazardly to her bedroom bulletin board. Her eyes roved the dimly lit mosaic of thumbtacks and card stock until she decided on one in particular to focus on. Dusk in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was the poison she ultimately chose. She readied her sights on the deep red hues and flat endless horizon. Squinting never helped in the past, so tonight she opted for wide unblinking eyelids. After a solid five minutes had gone by she reached, without breaking eye contact, to the nightstand for the machine. Putting one node to her right temple and one to her left, she shook her anxiety away from her, from her shoulders outward, giving the long wires a bit of a jangle as well. Then she closed her eyes. As she depressed the button on the white electronic box the wires were connected to, it began to whir. A couple bursts of pain jolted through her brain. It would be worth it, she told herself. Unable to control herself any longer, she dropped into the armchair conveniently placed right below her, still facing the pictures tacked up to the wall. Her head limped to the right and one of the nodes began to detach. She fluttered awake, groaning in a way that could not indicate anything but another failure. The closest she got this time was a cactus showing up in the middle of her English classroom on the first day of junior high. This nostalgia machine was not meant to take you to places you had not been, she concluded. Memories, it seemed, could only be revisited - not manufactured.
Source: SoundCloud / Constant Artists