Alright, god dammit. Yeah, I saw Jawbreaker at the beginning of the week. They still kick-ass live and played all the hits except for Chesterfield King. It was an amazing moment, not as transcendent as when I finally saw Yo La Tengo where I did actually cry, but man, who the fuck am I to have thought I would ever see Jawbreaker, a band who broke up when I was barely starting school?

Music as an emotional carrier, a reminder of who you were. I'm realizing this is true. I was texting kleinbl00 about this show a bit, because I have a really hard time with the punk scene and in general, the music thing. And I think that's because I no longer belong to it. That's a thought that has taken too long to reconcile, but there is an undeniable sensation I haven't felt (certain exceptions, such as the Yo La Tengo show, or finally seeing Belle and Sebastian live) that I don't feel anymore. It's the love of the new band, the new lyric you hadn't caught before, the extension of yourself through somebody else' song. The community all struggling against themselves and trying to make sense of it while arguing over the better punk scene.

It's not me anymore.

It extends beyond that, and tacocat touches upon this...the extreme feelings of the late-teens through early 20's just aren't there anymore (edit: I don't even think they can be called extreme, but they've certainly been dulled. It makes me a bit sad, really). I don't feel the love I felt for the long-term girlfriend I had in college, I don't get the butterflies in the stomach when meeting new people or seeing somebody interesting, or a nervous feeling of going to a concert and knowing all your friends are there. It's almost as if a lot of these things have been numbed, and here I am trying to desensitize through the mountains and ever-greater challenges. But it never truly replicates those feelings, both in good and bad ways. There's a great The Mountain Goats interview that touches on these topics, as well.

One thing you can do with the stuff you used to be into is to ask yourself, "What was in there for me? What was it about that that called to me then?" Once you have a better view of who you were then — why did you like it?

The view of who I was in the past, and who I am in the current, are amazingly different. There was a thought in my mind during that Jawbreaker set: I Don't Want to be the Sad Guy Anymore. Which, I'm not, in the current, but when all this music, all these much stronger emotions were being felt, I was very much that person.

I almost shaved my beard off the very next day.