Bookworm Room

I’m working on a fairly straightforward appellate brief right now, so it doesn’t require that I engage in enormously deep concentration. Because I can let my mind operate at more than one level for this project, I have Pandora playing in the background, with my usual chosen mix of Big Band, Pop, Disco, 50s Classics, and Brazilian music. (All have a driving beat that makes me type faster). Suddenly, out of the background blur of music I hear as I work, one song — a song I haven’t heard in almost 30 years — pops out and the present suddenly vanishes. Instead, of sitting at my home office, in front of my computer, a mid-40s lawyer and mother, I’m suddenly in 1979, a senior in high school. I’m driving the family station wagon (remember those?) on a brilliantly sunny day in San Francisco. My friends and I are just having fun and singing along as this song blares from the radio:

I have to tell you, when the song ended, it actually took me a minute to reorient myself to the present. Apparently I don’t need psychedelic drugs to experience some heavy-duty flashbacks.

Tags: Nick Lowe

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