Okkervil River
The Silver Gymnasium

Once again, the past comes back to visit us. Once again, memories resurface, reemerging like a loud slap across the face. I'm in what was my home for twenty years. Sitting next to me are uncles, cousins, and lifelong friends I left behind. They convinced me to return, to escape the dullness of the city for this weekend and enter the vibrant green of the woods surrounding the village. My village, where I was a child and a teenager, a mischievous boy and an introverted youth.

I contributed to this dinner with wine and music. I put on the new album by Okkervil River, a band that, of course, none of the people present know except me, and I'm invaded by nostalgia and emotions I haven't felt in years. Their music continues the conversation started by Conor Oberst and Jeff Mangum, a discourse that looks to the past, the curse and delight of everyone's life. Bitter-sweet rock of the old times and folk that smells of family blend perfectly, leaving us with the pure taste of something that has shaped our way of being, our personalities. An inspired, fascinating, nostalgic album.

The piano from "It Was My Season" accompanies me toward the little world I've now left behind. A village that has stopped, never fully evolved into the new millennium. A small corner of the world that holds many of my memories. It was my season, says Will Sheff in the song, and I think back to summer. It was the early nineties, around my house were stretches of green. Bales of hay twice my height that I tried to climb with my friends, or under which I would lie to shelter in the shade. It was my season, the summer, barefoot in the dry grass of the fields with a glass jar chasing grasshoppers and lizards. I was happy back then, there was the innocence of being children and the imagination that kept us away from everyday life.

The sumptuous lunch flows almost in slow motion. Aunt asks me if I found a girlfriend, her husband frowns at my tattoo on my arm. My cousins' children run around the table shrieking, and I can't stand them. The dessert made by mom arrives. She sits next to me and asks why I grew a beard. I shrug. I go for a stroll, I say, and I'll be back later. I leave that house, take the driveway, and once past the gate, I put the white earbuds in my ears. On the balconies of the old neighboring houses, elderly ladies watch my passing with curiosity. "On A Balcony" has the rock rhythm of a young Bruce Springsteen. Cheerfulness holding hands with nostalgia. The next "Down Down The Deep River" brings back other episodes of my life that seem distant. I take a path to the right and walk in the woods until I reach the stream that flows through the village. A stream where I would go fishing for trout with the other kids, on Sunday mornings. Not far from me, there's a young boy with a fishing rod. I raise my hand and greet him, and he returns the gesture. I hear the hum of the reel, see the shimmering line and the red float waiting for a fish. When we were little, we would go there and have fun with what was available. We used to wrestle in the shallow, cold waters of that river, or race to see who could throw stones the farthest. Every time we returned home soaking wet but satisfied and happy. "We can never go back, we can only remember", says the song.

I return to the village. Okkervil River continues to play their past. "Where The Spirit Left Us" and "White" unleash their emotions that have now passed and are never felt again, their troubled adolescence left behind but remembered with melancholy. I walk past the school, it remains identical to how it was when I attended it. Hard times, a period that, straddling the old and new millennium, I spent between bullying and moments of despair, between first crushes and disappointments that seemed endless. I walk past a very white house, with a manicured garden and two dogs napping in the shade. I remember when, no longer children, some others and I hid among the shrubs of that house to spy on the girl who lived there. She would lie on the terrace to sunbathe. I remember her pink bikini, and I smile thinking about our daring young fantasies. She was beautiful and always in our dreams. I wonder what became of her. From a side door of the house, a fat woman with a dull face and hair tied up in a ponytail comes out. She stops when she sees me, she says good morning. I greet her. The girl we used to spy on has become like this, trapped in this small village, stuck in a static and lifeless reality.

"Walking Without Frankie" nearly moves me to tears. It brings back buried memories. It makes me remember my best friend, who is now locked in a solitary and depressing life. He never leaves the house; no one ever sees or hears him. They say he stays there, in his little living room in his underwear, drinking from morning till night, immersed in dirt and dust. We were always together, everyone in the village feared us for our pranks. Two brats, two reckless boys who enjoyed disturbing the entire neighborhood. Especially the old ladies. How much we laughed together, what wonderful afternoons those were, spent laughing, joking, and playing. Then I left for the city, and he stayed here in the village. A village that became his prison, his tomb. He started drinking, molesting girls, and hitting his mother. Walking without him is sad; walking in this village without him by my side is hard. Knowing what happened to him makes me feel guilty for not being able to be there for him.

The eleven tracks of this beautiful album are anthems of a youth never to return. I walk and return to the gate of home. Nothing has changed all this time. It's almost as if time hasn't passed here, the months and years have stopped. I was a child and a teenager here; I left before that confined, dead-end life could crush me. I abandoned my mountains for the city, left my home surrounded by green to find one amidst the metropolitan gray. Now I'm a man, with more beard and less hair. I have a life away from here, but in the end, as the title of an Okkervil River song says, "All The Time Every Day", every day I'll think about this place, about this house. Every day, for as long as I have left, I'll think of my past and smile. I'll think of my past, and a shiver of nostalgia will run down my spine, giving me the strength to look forward.