Every once in a while I listen to an old song that isn’t terribly crucial to the world’s musical climate or history, isn’t going to make any top 10 lists or inspire a novel, but still exists for me as a pretty reliable—if somewhat melancholy—document of where I was and what I was doing when the song came out, and where I’ve come to land and rest in the intervening years, what I’ve lost and gained, the mathematics of age and knowledge keeping me up at night. Keep in mind: these are usually pretty dumb songs, but I like them anyway, even if it means being mocked and shunned by my peers (but you can’t kick me out of the band, Dino, it was just last weekend we blasted Slippery When Wet). See, I won’t apologize. Time was, I would call these songs guilty pleasures, but Andrew WK helped me realize that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. There’s just music, and if you like it, you like it, and if someone tells you you’re not allowed to like that music, well, then, that person is an asshole.

The song that kind of started me on this jaunt is—and keep in mind my disclaimers in the previous ¶—the song is, um, “Take A Picture” by Filter. That’s right. There, it’s off my chest. I listened to it the other day and I must admit I got kind of veklempt, to be quite honest. I have no real knowledge or desire for knowledge of any other songs in the Filter ouevre, except I know that I hate that “Hey Man Nice Shot” song. But this one song gets to me in a way I was embarrassed to admit to until just now, when I decided to come out of the guilty pleasures closet. The song doesn’t really conjure many memories of the time when it was popular, except I remember it came out the winter of 1999/2000, a time when I was kind of sad and confused, a feeling that the song suits well, I guess. Laugh if you must, but I bet you have your own secret song.

Anyway, but my main point is that, when I listened to it the other day, I could think only of everything that’s happened in the three years since. A lot of people come and gone—more gone, really—and I’m a little older and maybe a bit wiser—more older, really.