Andrew Angelos

On any given night throughout my drug-laced teen years, you might’ve found a colored bandana draped over my lamp with incense burning in the ashtray; the former was to give the room some ambience, and the latter to convince my mother that what she was smelling wasn’t weed. I’d then layer the turntable with my favorite albums, slip on the headphones and lay down my head, dreaming of the future and all its possibilities. One song in particular – Kashmir by Led Zeppelin – always whisked me off into a cerebral music video. For me, the cadence of this song was reminiscent of a march, wistful and triumphant with sweeping crescendos, like a man on a mission to find a lost lover. I’d imagine him braving nature’s fury across the harshest of terrain scouring the far reaches of earth, his path paved with the bodies of those who stood in his way. Through the years, these fragments of a reverie would poke and needle me, not letting go, growing with detail over time. Then one day, the verses...