Like many songs back then in middle school, I associate The Clockmaker - Vexare with the spring rain in Virginia, and the cold morning bus rides waiting for first period.
It’s dubstep of course. I would steel myself up each morning to telling myself I had a mission for the day. I was just a child, but I was alive — or atleast alive within the bubble of understanding that I had.
It hard to keep focus, I would drift in and out, from worries about my todos, or just abstract desires to work harder somehow, or to figure out how to waste less time.
When you hear it, you won’t miss it. It’s unmistakable. It snaps you back to reality, and your mortality grips you. Unlike how you thought it would sound, it’s far more pressing than it is rhythmic: “tik tik tik” drumming faster than you can keep up — always. Taunting you: “ready or not, here I come”.
Back then, this woke me up — I leaned forward, and let a pseudo adrenaline pump, and told myself to become something more than I was — as much as I could.
Today, I am weaker, but also wiser. I’m old enough now to realize that it is a beautiful thing when time slips through your fingertips. You can’t hold on to it any tighter - you can’t fight it, you just have to savor every drop, and to be thankful for it all.
N and I coined a cute phrase to live by, to be: “In pursuit of losing track of time”
TODO
List out more songs that have clock noises in them. They all give me similar chills but in a good way.