Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 137: Nate

Prompt: "A song for which you could easily name 100 reasons why you love the song"

Selected by Nate

"Please Visit Your National Parks"

Mike Pace and the Child Actors

single, 2020

This is a cheat.

This song was originally released in 2006, back when Mike Pace was still the lead singer and guitar player for Oxford Collapse, a somewhat jangly indie rock band equally indebted to Yo La Tengo and R.E.M.

That version of the song is incredible. I really suggest you go listen to it.

Some songs just hit you in the right place and at the right time. I know enough about music theory and song construction to know that there are certain chord progressions and patters that will elicit a specific kind of emotional response and that what feels internal and emotional is in fact a reflection of math. I don't know enough to say for sure that the movement from verse to bridge on this song is one of those magic chords that pleases the lord, but I do know that it makes me feel like I'm sixteen years old every time I hear it.

As I get older—I was going to say "We" here, but I honestly have no idea if anyone else feels this way besides me, so it's probably better to just personal essay this shit—I worry that my memory of being a teenage is becoming detached from my experience of being a teenager. I know a lot of the time was spend in my room, or watching TV, or on the computer, feeling like I was missing something, like all my friends were having a great time without me somewhere, like the experience of my life was taking place in a location I could not access.

I suspect this is how everyone feels sometimes as a kid, especially people with low self-esteem. The truth that a lot of my friends were probably doing the same thing I was, waiting around moping and waiting for the phone to right is one that came later in life and is of no comfort to my old self back there in the past, watching Lord of the Rings on TBS on a Saturday night.

But that's not true, because I also remember times when I was so happy I thought I was immortal, that no one else in the world could be as alive and bathed in joy as I was. The blessing of time is that I can't recall what inspired those feelings, so there's no chance to self-confess whatever embarrassing thing was sparking that feeling of elation—it was probably in the parking lot of the Krispy Kreme on Jefferson Avenue, or in someone's basement, or at some terrible rock club—but I can remember the dueling feelings of the world being all in front of me, but also rapidly passing behind me, a greased moment that could only be glimpsed but never held.

You know, I liked a few paragraphs back. This song could hit me at any time and it would feel right.

I was not on the ground floor for Oxford Collapse. I didn't hear about them until they were winding down, a few months away from breaking up. I discovered them on MTV 2, of all places. I was staying at a drug buddy's house, waiting for someone to come over for some reason but you can probably guess, when the video for "Young Love Delivers" came on.

I wonder how this video holds up for someone who isn't a dipshit 22-year-old, but I think now how I thought then, this is a pretty sweet video.

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You know, there was supposed to be a whole 90 other paragraphs of this, but life caught up and I don't want to be late. This song rocks. Next prompt.