Daily Jam - Oh My Love

This column was originally published in 2018.

Does 2011 feel like an absurdly long time ago to anyone else out there? It’s just been seven years, but it feels like a mini-eternity, a faded recollection of a time that doesn’t really seem like it ever existed in the first place. Maybe it’s the increasing speed at which the news cycle runs these days, the barrage of information, soundbites, and images parading before our senses like a tape in fast forward. Or it’s the encroaching layer of dread that covers everything like a thick slime, some horrible inevitable conclusion looming just beyond the horizon. Or it’s just the mess of modern times. Everything blurs. Everything runs together. It’s too fast. It’s too loud. It’s sensory overload. Time is broken.

It could just be me though, 2011-12 being that last stretch of existence for me before fatherhood began, a truly course altering kind of event that has left me a perpetual zombie of sorts ever since, making the past feel far away and surreal.

2011 was a lifetime ago, is what I’m getting at here.

And off the top of my head, there’s only a handful of things I can really remember from back then (what the hell was I doing with my time?), like visiting an old friend in Seattle, or getting way, way too drunk during a day party at SXSW. And I remember the movie Drive. I remember seeing Drive and how absolutely taken I was with every aspect of the film, from the narrative to the direction to the action, the costumes to the sound design to the magnetic presence of Ryan Gosling, and on and on. And the music. Especially the music. I was borderline obsessed with the film’s soundtrack, Cliff Martinez’s pulsing score along with selected synth pop songs from the likes of Kavinsky, Chromatics, and more working their way into all of the nooks and crannies of my subconsciousness, and eventually spreading throughout the proverbial echelons of pop culture and beyond as well. In some ways it felt like a shift or movement, and both the movie’s and the soundtrack’s influence still reverberates.

And holy cow did I fall for the Riz Ortolani track used in the film and the trailer. Lifted from a slightly notorious, early ‘70s Italian exploitation film called Addio Zio Tom, Ortolani’s stunning “Oh My Love,” featuring beautiful vocals from Katyna Ranieri, provided an overtly dramatic sheen to Nicolas Winding Refn’s hip and stylized feature. It added oomph to a movie that was already swimming in oomph, and landed on oh so many playlists of mine. Something about those powerful strings touch deep within my heart, making me long for…something.

I couldn’t tell you what that something is. But it sure feels like it was so long ago.