hey loyal followers, it’s yer girl bella here

ten years (and eleven days, i forgot to make this earlier) ago plastic beach by gorillaz was released. to me it’s timeless and yet also tied to a very specific time in my life. i’m not gonna go into its artistic merits, i’m not a good music critic, but suffice it to say i think it may be gorillaz’s best album.

but the album brings back intensely vivid memories of my last semester in college. specifically driving around queens in my friend’s 2001 toyota corolla – a car that he still drives to this day – with me and my girlfriend, the first and maybe last person i was ever in love with, sitting in the backseat with plastic beach playing on my mp3 player (it would be a few years until i got a smart phone) connected via the tape deck trying to find a twenty four hour dunkin donuts since it was like three in the morning and having to drive out to long island to find one. that’s a helluva run-on sentence that i don’t know to fix.

but i’m pretty sure that was like a dozen memories smashed together to create a perfect little time capsule of my life a decade ago. right after that semester my world was shattered for the first time in my adult life when that girlfriend broke up with me twice, and sent me on a ten year binge of steadily more intense introspection

but this album reminds me of too much. good times, ex-friends, home, bad times, and concepts of self that no longer exist.