I'm having a difficult time pinpointing when I fell in love with the music of Radiohead. It might have been at some point in early high school, when my brother was still at home and tipping me off to music he liked that I might (a thing he still does that I love :)). It might have been late high school - I feel like I remember bonding over a love of Radiohead with my now dear friend Adam when I met him on a national 4H trip my senior year.
I DO distinctly remember hearing "There, There" on the radio (sheesh, which station would it have been then?!) and thinking that it was just something else entirely. Something that grabbed my gut and smooshed my soul around. That sounds really dramatic. But isn't that what really good art is SUPPOSED to do to you? I've never claimed to be shy with my feelings :). Upon a little research, it looks like this single was released on May 26th, 2003, three days after I graduated high school. I think I marched out and bought the album its on - Hail to the Thief - right when it was released, as it came out two weeks later! I think I bought it, in a rash of buying several other CDs - that's right, CDs - at the Burnsville Best Buy. Not even sure it's still there.
The point of this diatribe is the NOSTALGIA that my love of Radiohead releases for me. But its not that simple - while their music is an Old Love for me, it is very much an Ongoing Love. While I get the feels thinking about how that album carried me through the Fall and Winter of my first year in college, I also get the feels thinking about how Kris surprised me with the disc of In Rainbows in Summer 2008, right before I flew off to live in Calgary for nine months. I get the feels thinking about when The King of Limbs came out in Winter 2011, and how the track "Bloom" was the soundtrack of my Spring that year, generating big creative ideas that I did not yet know what to do with (and did not yet have the resources to achieve - hell, I STILL don't have THAT kind of resources - I don't think any artist ever feels like they have the level of resource they could use, but I sure do have a lot more now than I did then :)). I remember the time I spent digging back into the earlier parts of their catalogue, discovering all this music that lit up my senses and put my insides to sound more than anything else I'd heard before. I remember A Moon Shaped Pool coming out in Spring 2016 and walking around my new neighborhood, freshly living in our house, exploring my surroundings and feeling thrilled that I had a Radiohead soundtrack with which to do so.
I may not be able to claim that I'm 'their biggest fan,' though I am proud to say that I did buy plane tickets to fly out to see them in Kansas City - their closest tour stop - right before my birthday in 2017, the one time I've gotten to see them live, which was MAGIC. There are many music videos I haven't seen. There are lyrics I'm not positive about (honestly, sometimes I like it better that the words at times are just collections of intention-charged sounds). There's an absolute treasure trove in the Radiohead Public Library that I haven't been able to explore. But my love for this music now has spanned almost twenty years. About half my life.
I thought, going into the show I am opening tonight, that creating the project would spur me to dig deeply into 'everything Radiohead I've missed,' but that hasn't been the case. I welcomed a New Love into my life in December 2021 - my Niko boy! - and the time palate I've had to dedicate to such projects has changed. On my walk this morning, which brought forth some serious pandemic full-circle-ness as I found myself taking photos of trees against a crisp, bright sunrise, I got thinking about how Niko was a mere idea when initial work on this project began. Maybe he wasn't really even a idea (at least one being discussed yet) - I think Music Lead Mike Lauer and I met in early 2020 for a beer to talk about this project, which we decided we'd do in February 2021. The dancers and I began online rehearsals I believe in October 2020, we filmed in January 2021 and released our Radiohead-inspired screendances in February 2021, the month for which the stage show was originally planned.
Niko became a discussed idea in December 2020, when Kris and I agreed we'd start casually trying for a kiddo in the new year. I found out I was pregnant on April 4th - Easter - a day after I'd gotten flustered when dancer Kelli asked me at a video shoot if I thought I wanted to have kids! So the major work for the first iteration of this project all happened between when we decided to try and when we found out he was coming. The precipice right before the flurry of incubating my (our) most ambitious creative project yet. Likely ever!
This New Love - Niko - has certainly changed how my life works. But he has NOT - and HAS - changed 'everything,' as so many people told us he would. I still love Radiohead. But I can now love them in new ways. The ways I hear their music are still the same - and also different - because I have the New Love that informs how I listen. I'll go ahead and say that's a metaphor for a larger truth for me ;)
Old Loves. New Loves. Love.
