The Pull of Nostalgia
How Frank Ocean’s Blonde forced me to confront my poisonous relationships and supplant itself as my album of the year.
Her hair was blonde. We never dated, the timing was wrong. Purgatory was where we resided: that awful wasteland of noncommittal players. Intimate friends is probably the best way to label it. We had other bodies that laid in our beds. But nothing was as comforting as mine intertwined with hers, legs locked like ivy crawling up a wall. The love given was never known, but that’s what made it electric.
When I found myself racing to her house at 2 A.M, drunk out of my mind or feeling the buzz of my phone and seeing those two letters that signaled her call: that’s when the emotion was the most intense. To outsiders, it seemed one-sided. And at times, it was. But I enjoyed playing her game. It’s the only game I enjoyed losing, because simply playing it was enough for me. But then the game ended. I took my boot and marched over the embers.
I always thought the fire was real. But it turns out it was made of paper. I was buying wood when I should have been buying tissue paper. I lifted the veil and realized I was under a heat lamp, recently unplugged, heat escaping. I was last night’s leftovers. I tried to convince myself that the lamp could work without electricity, that being the leftovers was just as important. Every time she opened the refrigerator door, I would try to attract her growling stomach with my leftover glaze.
The thing about leftovers is that they are hidden among the delicacies so they are unaware of their real purpose. That purpose is comfort and convenience. And in the growling stomach’s mind, they expect you to perform at your previous level; but you’re reheated so much that the part-time warmth pales in comparison to the original heat. Only, the leftovers can’t distinguish the original warmth from the reheated warmth. And the growling stomach keeps eating you, keeping you around until you expire. Then they throw you out and make a new meal.
So now I’m stuck with the memories, a 50/50 mess of comfort and pain. Nostalgia fuels those memories. It’s painful, yet addicting. I’m not quite sure if I love or hate it. It bites at off-putting and unexpected moments: late at night, when I’m sleeping with another girl, hoping the body somehow morphs into hers by the morning; smelling her perfume as someone walks past me; seeing the beanie in my drawer that she knitted for me when I had cancer; or seeing the permanent bite marks on my person from the bedroom. The biggest purveyor of nostalgia, however, returned in 2016. He came out of hiding to release yet another timely album, an album that wasn’t easy for me to approach. This man is Frank Ocean and Blonde is my album of the year.
Channel Orange came out the summer prior to my senior year of high school. We weren’t the most popular kids in school because we shunned the suburban life that so many of our peers became comfortable with. People confused us as gay because we were inseparable. But there was an admiration and affinity there; two guys who understood there was more out there than our small suburban town. People asked us if we would remain friends after high school. This seemed ludicrous. We had applied to a few similar schools and considered being roommates; deep down, I think we both knew our paths would move in opposite directions. I soon fell in love with West Virginia; he, Howard. Channel Orange provided the soundtrack to our final year; our final year of close friendship, adolescence, and discovery.
When Channel Orange was released in 2012, being openly gay or bisexual was still controversial. Listeners were confused: Was Frank singing about a guy or a girl? Was he singing about both? It caused people to listen with acute attention, ears sticking up at any hints or clues as to who Frank was talking about. But the more you listened, the more it didn’t matter. Love is love and transcends all boundaries. We loved each other, but not on any sexual level. We were straight dudes who didn’t shy away from our feelings or emotions. Channel Orange brought us together over that summer, as we practiced rolling blunts and drank twelve packs. Channel Orange is ambiguous, providing an outline for whatever message you want to decipher from it. It closed out that last summer, introduced us to our senior years, took us through Homecoming and Prom, various other relationships, gallery showings, photography sessions, trespassing escapades, beach trips, the inevitable day of graduation, and subsequently the departure to college. The pull of nostalgia with Channel Orange takes me back to those days of insecurity and naïveté that don’t exist anymore.
Blonde is different. Frank is toying with nostalgia again — I’m just not prepared to face it. I’m a coward. I spent many nights wondering what I could have done differently to change our situation:
‘Should I have accepted the off-again love that I was receiving? Or the non-communication that was happening? Should I have just tailored my life to her needs, even though mine weren’t being met at all? Should I not have challenged her so much, causing her to anger and to phone the many other men in her life right in front of me? Should I just give her what she wants, because her insecurities don’t allow other people in charge? Should I have just swallowed my ounces of pain for that gram of happiness?
Many nights I held on to our past, hoping it would evolve into that physical being; something I could hug and kiss again. In Blonde, Frank seems to have documented this feeling. His narrative style of writing uses nostalgia as a vessel for which he can share the impact this past relationship has had on his maturity. He goes back and forth on how he should interpret the relationship. He shuffles positivity with negativity. This is most apparent in the track “Nights” when flip-flops within the same song. “Solo” has Ocean looking back at a memory when they were better off together but then sings “we were better off solo.” He ultimately wishes his former partner well on the second-to-last track “Godspeed.” The opening line of the song sings “I will always love you how I do” coupled a few lines later with “The table is prepared for you.” Frank has come to terms with this past lover and seems to forgive them despite the unrequited love. The breaking of the bread is the imaginary table that his lover is always welcome to. Frank is accepting his loss, while still trying to salvage the positive memories that were created between the two.
It’s been months since I’ve talked to her and I have just begun to live with the memories and have them treat me with pleasure, rather than pain. The release of Blonde opened the box that I had stored those memories in, and forced me to look deeper on our former relationship. Frank’s lyrics were so spot on with my situation, I almost couldn’t handle it. I overplayed the album in its first two weeks, lingering to the nostalgic feeling that Frank so perfectly curated. Then I threw it away. I was mad at myself for wading in those memories, clinging to a non-existant feeling. And I tried to blame Frank.
“How dare you bring these feelings back?”
But I knew it wasn’t fair. I made up lies to myself and my peers, blaming the production or inaccessibility because of the sonic shift from Channel Orange. I couldn’t bare to listen to it because I felt guilty sifting through the emotions I fought so hard to bury under my rug. I felt guilty wasting conscious space on a silly, unstable, non-concrete relationship. I felt dumb and exposed. But then I came to the realization that Frank had the same experience, but was brave enough to spend four years sorting through his own memories and nostalgia and tell his story to the public.
If Frank was willing to put his past relationships to the public flame, why couldn’t I stand there with him? Blonde works like a time capsule, each of my nostalgic memories encased within each song. I can choose when to go back to that precious time when her and I were good to each other, instead of frivolous and sour like we are now. She made me feel like the emotions I had weren’t real, and that I should somehow feel weak for having them. But I was forgetting left overs can be used to make a new dish, one eaten by other people: pot-luck.
Channel Orange defined the relationship with my friend from high school and Blonde seems to capture the most pivotal relationship from college. It wasn’t the most lasting. It at times doesn’t even feel real. But it taught me numerous things about myself that I can take with me as I begin my victory lap around Morgantown. I used to hate the fact it existed, taking away precious time that could have been spent with people that actually cared about me. But Frank has taught me that the painful relationships encompass our beings and growth just as much as the loving ones. It’s still confusing. And Frank still seems confused. But he’s at ease with his confusion, much like I am.
Instead of placing blame, I’m here to say thank you Frank. Thank you for making my guilt seem shapeless. Thank you for allowing me to feel comfortable having emotions for a person that couldn’t share them with me. Thank you for creating an album that is so personal, yet relatable.Thank you for a digital time capsule that I can dive in and soak myself with my nostalgia. Those imprints allow me to move on.
What I’m moving on from, I don’t know, much like Frank. Our lives are collections of moments and memories and I won’t continue to feel sorry for the ones that have defined me, even if they are negative. Nostalgia continues to pull on me, but the tug isn’t so fierce. She took a part of me that I’m afraid I won’t get back. I can’t be intimate with anyone anymore, but hopefully only for the time being. The hardest part is her unawares. I can’t even ask for that part of me back because she doesn’t know she has it. But like all things, time heals wounds. New relationships are on the horizon. As Frank closes in “Godspeed”: “I’ll always love you/Until the time we die.”
