The times, they are a-changin'
You really can't go home again, huh?
Today, I’ll be writing about change. I sit writing this, listening to The Beach Boys’ Smile Sessions, something I’ve been listening to since the first year of college. Since my last post, I’ve become a web developer, graphic designer, made installations, and even went to summer camp at NYU. Things sometimes change. Things sometimes don’t.
This past week, I spent some time with my family (including my godsend of a niece, also a new change from this past year!), and did a lot of driving around — something you can’t avoid in the 'burbs. The skies in neighborhoods remain crowded with tall pine and maple canopies, cars still whizz too quickly around tight bends built for carriages a hundred years ago, the stillness of the late-day Long Island Sound in cozy port towns is still enough to demand a few seconds of lovely reverie and a brief smile.
As time passes, things naturally change: the development boom that started two decades ago, introducing a litany of hideous skyscrapers along the hubs of the lower Hudson Valley, continues to grow, now horizontally, content to blot out all the remaining sun, character, and affordable housing in their spheres of influence. Deli sandwiches, once $10, are a staggering $17. Coffee is nearing $7. Gas is an arm and a leg (that, maybe, isn’t so new). Landmarks have changed hands, swapped paint palettes, or vanished altogether, sacrificed to the whims of million-dollar condo developers or infrastructure seemingly forgotten, where even municipal budgets can’t save them.
I’ve learned an entire practice, now more familiar with WordPress than I ever, ever could’ve imagined (or, really, wanted). I live in CSS style sheets now, developing little audio tools on the side for fun, learning and relearning JavaScript until it breaches the sanctity of even my dreams, throwing async functions across computer monitors in my sleep. I, at the behest of my incredible partner (to whom I really owe all of my growth this past year), started hitting the gym, got into One Piece, and entered my Zoro arc (but instead of Three Sword Style, its Bench Two Plate Style). I’ve gotten comfortable with — my chronic illness? Disability? Long COVID manifestation? — tinnitus, calmed down a bit, and started really working to make Dayflower Studio work.
I’m really writing this to touch on one, but kinda two, specific things. Recently, my family’s found itself spread across the globe — literally, a 12-hour time difference away — or living in new places, or moving out of old ones, or coming to visit me at mine. Family gatherings are marked by an incredibly striking, visceral absence. I left an apartment, a place I moved two brothers into, for the very last time this last weekend. The same feeling of absence coalesced into what I could only describe as a pit: knowing that something is really, really over, that you closed a door for the last time in your life.
But there’s an absolutely beautiful newness that’s been painting my distant horizons a warm shade of pink this past year: the newest member of my family, and the prospect that Dayflower, which was only a little side project at the time of the last post, can not only survive, but thrive. I’ve started taking things seriously and investing the time needed into Dayflower to make it something I do for the rest of my life, comfortably working away on projects I enjoy, supporting myself, visiting family, going to the beach (crucial), stealing away on flights to Miami (if you ever get the chance, go to the Everglades), and finding… peace?
It’s a strong word, but I think it’s what I feel welling up right next to my growing pool of hope and trickle of pride in my work.
I had to read a book my senior year of high school from Thomas Wolfe titled You Can’t Go Home Again. It was an absolutely brutal slog, some captivatingly personal vignettes interspersed sparingly among books worth of asides and exposition. What’s stuck with me, though, is its end: our protagonist, an author, writes to his editor about finality and Ecclesiastes. The world he lived in years ago has changed unrecognizably, and while there’s time for mourning, there’s just as much for the joy of the present, and the excited anticipation of the future.
All of this to say: I’m back. Dayflower is alive, kicking (if not sprinting), and making a name for itself. The album is winding down to a close — I’m nearing the end of Your Welcome. But I’m incredibly excited for what tomorrow will bring.