Zeit, tangerines and dreams

Can a milestone be timeless?

Here’s not a blast from the past but a piece of music I heard first back when I was not yet a teenager. It’s not a blast from the past because it doesn’t blast from the past. It blasts, very languidly, from the now.

The YouTube comments are filled with praise for it and, whatever your taste is, and whether any of this coincides with your taste, one cannot deny its masterfulness.

Tangerine Dream are German, and that’s all I ever knew about them. The nature of their work is such as to almost invite the conclusion: that’s all you need to know about them, unless that’s already too much. Their music speaks in a very deep register.

I read over some of the comments posted by other aficionados: one described it as like being abandoned in space; one said he could trip on this, even without the dope; one described it as a milestone in musical history. And one described it as timeless.

That gave me pause for thought: I think you’re right. And yet somebody has described it as a milestone. Can a milestone be timeless? Does a milestone not tell you exactly where you are in time, to the mile?

I clicked here now, and was immediately back then. At the milestone. Half a century ago. As if the milestone hadn’t moved. Because it hadn’t. Timeless. I think you’re right.

Zeit is a timeless milestone. I think I tripped without the dope.