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debate, but also the time-won answers to all of those anxieties-the knowledge of a failed romance, a magazine job I loved, and the fact that my 5 a.m. Inside the songs lived not only the memories of my first crush, my first journalism lecture, and my first 5 a.m. Replaying his music nine years later was like opening a time capsule and watching its treasures react to fresh oxygen. Most famous for his cover of “ Hallelujah,” he only recorded one major album before he died in a drowning accident, and I had it on loop the entire summer of 2004, into my September pre-orientation, and through my first month of school. I hadn’t heard Buckley in years, perhaps since graduation.

We’re all suckers for the last big thing.Ī year ago, at my college reunion, I was walking through the south stretch of campus, on a golden fall day in Chicago, and I suddenly felt a bracing urge to listen to Jeff Buckley. Musicologists estimate that for every hour of music-listening in the typical person’s lifetime, 54 minutes are spent with songs we’ve already heard. If anything, my re-consumption habits are tame compared to some of you, who have have read Harry Potter more than 10 times, watched Friday more than 100 times, and spent more of your waking life with The West Wing than Aaron Sorkin has. Going back to the same pop-culture fare for seconds, thirds, and thirtieths isn’t so abnormal. Instead, I’ve perfected fake skills, like performing an uncanny impersonation of Jack Nicholson’s final courtroom monologue. In all the hours I’ve spent re-consuming movies, shows, books, and songs, I could have learned a real skill, like playing an instrument or speaking several languages. I’m a creature of repetition when it comes to entertainment: Law and Order marathons drift by on lazy Saturday afternoons, Arrested Development episodes stream at night, and certain lugubrious British singers, particularly those sounding like they have a cold, play relentlessly in my earbuds. The number of movies I have once memorized is small ( The Lion King, A Few Good Men, and, inexplicably, While You Were Sleeping), but Dumb and Dumber is perhaps the only one where I have reasonably thought, “I could perform this entire film from start to finish, on my own.” On multiple occasions in college, I think I tried. It can be a terrible day, a stressful day, or a sick day, but within seconds of seeing Jim Carrey's bowl cut, I’m 10 years old again. The millisecond that Dumb and Dumber clicks into focus on the television screen, something magical happens to me.