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Welcome to the Treehouse

from The Treehouse of Memory & Regret by jimeddy

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Introduction to the concept album; spoken word.

lyrics

Thanks for joining me up in the treehouse, it’s nice to have the company. Boy, that wind is whipping tonight….let me get the window…that’s better.

You know, not all memories are experienced as regret, but let’s face it — a fair number of them are. Sometimes even fond memories are recollected through a haze of melancholia, with the residual regret being our confidence that those pleasant things might not be occurring again, in our present or future, due to changes in how life can now be lived.

Our poetic and musical heroes can still inspire us, long after they have left the ranks of the living, and we lament their passing…while at the same time we rejoice in the art they left to us, the art that moved us so.

The Portuguese have a fascinating word, that is pronounced, in European Portuguese, as “Saudade.”. There is no counterpart for this word in English — or in most languages for that matter — but “saudade” is meant to suggest a melancholic nostalgia for something that perhaps has not even happened. It carries an implied assurance that this thing one feels nostalgic for will never occur again. The Portuguese writer Manuel de Melo thought about saudade as "a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.” The fado music indigenous to Portugal is suffused with notions of saudade, and one can easily get lost in it emotionally.

As we start to honestly face our current climate crisis, another term entered the ecological discourse in about 2004, created by the Australian social scientist Glenn Albrecht — “Solastalgia.” Solastalgia is best described as the lived experience of negatively perceived environmental change. Albrecht himself thinks of it as "the homesickness you have when you are still at home" — while your home environment is changing in ways that are distressing and disorienting.

Solastalgia differs from the nostalgic distress that can come from simply being absent from home — instead it refers to the distress specifically caused by environmental change while you are still in your home environment — one that is becoming less recognizable all the time.

So this time around I climbed up the rope ladder to this treehouse, carrying with me memories, regrets, lamentations, tributes, saudade, and solastalgia — but it all fit nicely inside my head. I also chose not to pull the rope up behind me — I’m glad that you decided to climb on up too.

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from The Treehouse of Memory & Regret, released March 25, 2024

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jimeddy Ann Arbor, Michigan

I no longer trade time for money, so I'm a lucky guy. Songwriter, music collector (at a pathological level); supporter of independent artists of all stripes. Open mic enthusiast, international traveler every chance I get. Forward in All Directions!

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