feeling

nostalgic

2 books2 films2 albums

album1998

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

I resisted this album for years because of how much people talked about it. Then one night it made complete sense. The rawness isn't affectation — Mangum sounds like he has no choice but to mean every word. Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2 is the most heartbreaking song I know. I return to it when I want to feel something.

★★★★★5.0

emotionalnostalgicquietly-brilliant

stayed with me

film1995

Before Sunrise

Richard Linklater

A film built entirely on conversation and the feeling that a night like this could happen to you. Linklater trusts his actors and his audience completely. There's no plot. There doesn't need to be. Some films make you want things. This one made me want to walk around a city with someone I didn't know yet.

★★★★½4.5

nostalgicfeel-goodbeautiful

stayed with me

novel2018

Normal People

Sally Rooney

Rooney writes interiority like no one else. You spend the whole book frustrated that they won't just talk to each other — and then you realise that's the point. The miscommunication isn't a plot device. It's the subject. I recognised too much of myself in both of them.

★★★★☆4.0

emotionalfeel-goodnostalgic

film2023

Past Lives

Celine Song

Song's debut and one of the best films about adult longing I've seen. Nobody is the villain. Nobody does anything wrong. It's about the roads not taken — and how they shadow the ones you did. The last ten minutes are devastating without a single dramatic thing happening.

★★★★★5.0

emotionalnostalgicbeautiful

stayed with me

novel2020

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

Unlike anything else I've read. It starts as a puzzle and ends as something tender and strange. Clarke builds a world with such internal logic that by the time you understand what's happening, you've already accepted all of it completely. I finished it in one afternoon and sat with it for days.

★★★★½4.5

beautifulquietly-brilliantnostalgic

stayed with me

album2016

Blonde

Frank Ocean

There's no album that sounds more like the interior of someone's mind. Ocean builds moods rather than songs — Nikes, Self Control, Nights. The sequencing is part of the meaning. I've listened to it beginning to end more times than I can count and it still feels new in different moods.

★★★★★5.0

nostalgicbeautifulemotional

stayed with me