Nightswimming.

Sometimes, you get that feeling of hearing one thing, and you keep saying to yourself, 'I can't stop listening to it'. Without a doubt, R.E.M's magnum opus in my opinion. A song of purity, of escape, of a moment trapped in a mind, once upon a time.

Every time I hear this song in the background, or on the radio, or sometimes on my iPod, I get this feeling, of summer 2008, where everything seemed so easy, so relaxed, and so useless. All I did was smoke pot, drink booze with friends and go to house parties, beaches, and parks. I sat on swings, laughing away to the early mornings, walking back without any care at all about my future.

Knowing that there was always another day to change my life around, I squandered, acting stereotypically teenager like, and loving the parody I became, I remained that foolish. Jobs, family, and food weren't an issue, friends were. Love was.

I reminisce with care, and try to picture my being then. I wore a bee suit to a party full of sixth formers, me being a year below but seeing someone older, I never thought the house I stood in was anything I'd seen. Not a mansion, but an actual self decorated, self designed building, shaped in an abstract shape of the bow of a boat. That's one of the first few times I fell in a kind of love for a house.

I cared a bit for this girl, remembering the times we jumped on a bus after a gig, slowly drifting away to the sounds of the Smiths' 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out', smiling softly at our faces. We shared meals, walks on beaches and parties, both of us the exact opposites, me, an outcast guy who happened to be a captain for the basketball team, herself an Oxbridge certain, with manners I still won't understand today.

When summer 2008 ended, so did contact, she left for uni, and I stayed behind. Kept on somehow trudging through A Levels and life, but I did it in a more mature way. I understood that loss is also gaining. Some people say that if you keep on lingering about the past, it can haunt you. It can cause you to act foolish in the future.

When I saw R.E.M. a year or two ago, I remembered the power a song has in connection to a moment. Some have profound meanings, and I wouldn't give up my memories for any amount of money. No matter what happens, when I listen to Nightswimming, I feel happy. Happy that I was there, in that moment, sharing that thought or feeling.