i've been having sensory confusion, i think. or something like it. i felt it when i put on japanese breakfast's album jubilee in the car the other day. it was the first time i'd listened to the album, and specifically the opening track 'paprika' since the winter. as soon as i heard the opening lines of the song (lucidity came slowly...) i got this feeling, not unlike having something stuck in your teeth, that it was evoking something i couldn't put my finger on.

i think associating music with memories is a fairly universal phenomenon. if you listen to something a lot at one point in your life, go some time without listening to it, and then hear it again for the first time in a while, it'll likely pull things out of your brain you forgot were there.

for me, paprika is pulling at several things, or one thing i haven't been able to precise.

i downloaded jubilee before leaving for peru in january. i thought it might be my last time seeing my aunt who lives there and has cancer. it was kind of a hard trip, but i was there with my sister, who i don't get to see too often.

while i was down there, i started playing inscryption. up until that point i had generally avoided deck-building games for the same reasons i generally avoid rpgs. i tend to find the volume of decisions unappealing, as i usually have a background concern about optimization or the choices i don't make.

inscryption's mechanics, and the relatively limited choices it offers the player in its first stage felt accessible to me. more than that, by the time i finished the game in mid-january, it made me think about magic. i downloaded mtg arena, and started playing paper magic with one of my best friends. we started with jumpstart, and i picked up a couple packs; my first in around 20 years.

i think my reintroduction to magic is one of the things i feel when i listen to 'paprika'. perhaps it's the smell of new cards, or how giddy and nervous i felt at the kamigawa: neon dynasty prerelease my i went to, or reading reckoner bankbuster for the first time. maybe it's how the bracing, frigid air hit my esophagus, getting into a cold car and drive through the snow to my friend's apartment to play. it could be the taste of the lemon cake i traditionally make for my partner's february birthday. or it could just be the quiet sadness that seems to hang over the month like a grey sky, or the threat of nightfall.

whatever it is, when i listen to the song i feel it in roof of my mouth, or at the back of my throat. it feels like a problem to solve. i'm not sure i want to, though.