I was ruminating this morning on which Bayside record is my favorite.
If you’re a regular around these parts, you know I have difficulty trying to define “favorite.” Most emotionally resonate? Best technically? Worth returning to?
Ultimately, I realized comparing one Bayside record to another is a fruitless task. Despite being produced by (mostly) the same group of guys over a period of years, comparing these records is like comparing apples and oranges.
What stood out was how each of these records sounded like a particular stretch of time in my life. By sizing them up alongside one another, I was in reality comparing different seasons of my life.
Acoustic sounds like sleeping on the hotel couch during a high school marching band trip to play in the Rose Parade.
Bayside sounds like fighting with the high school girlfriend.
The Walking Wounded sounds a crisis of faith on late nights in June.
Shudder sounds like reports cards and transcripts and the looming threat of college admission right as I was struck with a profound sense of burnout.
Sirens and Condolences sounds even more like fighting with the high school girlfriend.
Killing Time sounds like laying on the floor of my dorm room and leaving summer camp with my co-counselors on nights off and that one girl in the back seat of my car whispering, “Oh, that lyric is beautiful.”
Cult sounds like season two of House of Cards and dressing room mirrors back stage, preparing for my last appearance on the black box stage at my college.
Vacancy sounds like riding a bike through the Michigan suburbs under August evenings stained with firework smoke, like moving into a one-bedroom apartment above a flower shop, and cooking my girlfriend breakfast in bed while she slept on a mattress on the living room floor.
Interrobang sounds like smoking a black and mild on the roof of my childhood home, just before my parents sold the house, like driving to my best friend’s wedding and somehow knowing everything was about to change, but not necessarily for the better.
One of my favorite scenes from any movie is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brief monologue about the “best days of our lives” from the 2009 comedy, Pirate Radio.
“These are the best days of our lives,” Hoffman says, a twinge of regret in his voice. “It’s a terrible thing to know, but I know it…We stood on top of the mountain, compadre. It’s a long way doobie-doobie down.”
This is a trap I’ve tried to avoid my entire life, believing any one season to be the “best years of my life.”
My best years weren’t high school. They weren’t college. They weren’t my twenties.
The same way each Bayside record is its own distinct thing, every season of my life has been wild and free and insane and not even remotely close to resembling the previous one.
To my mind, this is the best we can ask from life: that no stretch of time be “the best days of our lives,” but instead that every season, regardless of age or circumstance, be considered “times like these.”
Perhaps this is the first step towards being truly present.
joshua chamberlain 