‘Dawn of Individuation’ launches Season 3 of Drifter’s Sympathy by grappling with the etymology of nostalgia as an ‘acute form of homesickness’. Its a mellow opening that digs into the initial chance you get to invent yourself at age 13, the mating rituals of junior high school and the vanity that drives one to flip a penny into a water fountain and pray to god earnestly for popularity and affirmation. Turning more serious at the end, we address the moment you become truly molded as a teenager and the initial set of decisions one makes that will damn them towards their future self forever. Hearing Dinosaur Jr.’s first record begins to change Emil’s mind completely by confronting him with the idea that art ‘might actually be about what your really going through, rather than what you want people to think’. This is the moment we perceive the power of art as it radicalizes the child mind that was previously being trained to manipulate their appearance for other’s affirmation. By the end, Dawn of Individuation becomes a love letter to the power and beauty of what skateboarding and underground music can present to a kid by positing the idea of total independence to their mind. Like the previous seasons of Drifter’s Sympathy, the first episodes roll back the clock to early life and then crawl up closer to current times, winding thru the stories of Emil’s 3 guru’s and the various upsets that were alchemically turned into pieces of the puzzle of his huge body of artwork over the last few decades.
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