Record Reconstructor

Here it is, my white whale.  I changed the numbering scheme because it felt like putting "Day 1048: Duran Duran" seemed disingenous and made me look like the obvious flake that I am.  Also, I'm definitely not commiting myself to doing one of these a day like I did before, since I think the pressure is part of what burned me out - instead, when the mood strikes me, I'll fire up and album from the Pile and see if it makes me want to write something about it. This one, however, remains inscrutable.  As I listen to "The Reflex", I'm not transported back to a specific time, place or person.  I try and think back and ask myself "Why do I own this album?  How has it remained in my collection when so many better albums have been lost in a dozen house moves, loans to friends, or left in car glove boxes absent-mindedly?".  I have no memory of my motivations for its purchase.  Like a traumatic event, it is as if the recollection has been repressed of the ...

Duran Duran gave me writer's block for three years.   They're what's next in the pile, and with momentum on my side and 68 previously published anecdote/story/album review hybrids behind me I slammed headfirst into Simon Le Bon and came to a screeching halt.  There's also a degree to which my pause coincided with Catherine's 40th Birthday celebrations, which I spent a lot of time organising, then Christmas, then a change in my job which meant my free time got pretty drastically curtailed and by the time I realised I hadn't written anything for weeks, then months, it got harder and harder to bring myself back to the keyboard and figure out what pithy bon mots I could summon up to describe my feelings for "Is There Something I Should Know?". Given current circumstances, that's what I like to refer to as the Good Old Days.  Now, 4 months into a global pandemic that is as frustrating to sit in isolation through as it is maddening to see those...