On the whole, reunions make me queasy. Returning from London for a month to Maidenhead I knew there would be many - old friends for homecoming drinks, newer ones smoking blunts on the roof of the town hall, acquaintances calling in at mine before a night out with my sisters, lost friends and enemies stalking the streets of town on a Saturday afternoon or a Friday night.

The thought of all make me fizz nervous as I cross the bulgen Thames over Brunel's Sounding Arch, a town pretender come cutting through the smoke to what essentially still is my overgrown village.

"Where've you been tonight?"

To see a record.

"What?"

A record; one I fell first for a girl to.

Not a standard night. A stranded night. A feel of an absence in my cupped hand and in my aching diaphragm.

"You wanker."

The memories...

Daydream Nation is a brilliant, beautiful, tragic record. One of this life's best records, one to dust off and keep in highest regard in the bedroom disc stand or place apart so as not to make it sit in this cheap Argos furniture.

One to put apart because it sets us apart - those who hear it, heard it, cut their losses with mundanity and run. Come cutting through the Sounding Arch smoke but pawing toward a third exit like a train derailed and miraculously skidding upright through a hidden village.

Daydream Nation is a record, a record of a time spent in a hidden zone. A zone that sits somewhere between spine and skull, gurn and flex, tongue bite and nod. It is a chart of Thurston and Kim and Lee and Steve's imaginations; a vessel so in peril yet so sure. Soundtracked by guitars that flit and float and hum like a steel wasp in a rainstorm.

Witnessing this escape. There was a time when the storm still dropped, a captor still loomed, a bullying presence that challenged confidence and made them brave. Now it's a record greeted with darkness and 4,000 clapping hands.

Nothing seems as brave now, in this time. They beat the clocks already, outrun the chase, out thought the schemes, moved faster than speed. That metal wasp flew so far in the rain there was no-one around to sting.

Still, a time outrun but still a turtle time that ticked on in earnest. Arms, hands, fists caught up. Now cod liver elbows are casting shadows on the Roundhouse and giving old, weaker ones the jump.

I'm one of the youngest here tonight.

"You're practically infant school."

Yer. But I still know the beat. The rhythm that taps on pulses and pumps in veins, echoes in chambers and in action leaks out bare. I know what time is, I know a challenge and risk and reward 'cause I know of the warrant that rests at the end of moments, the great validator in its black ceremonial cloak.

"Shut the fuck up."

"This nagging voice..."

Crossing and uncrossing arms.

"This brass schema that nags..."

Is this worthwhile? Yeah, Daydream's an escape. How much can a clock puncture its bubble and cede that escape?

Enough. Time is an alarm rousing it and me from sleep.

At least it's not the Stones. They're caught, caged and sorted. This - this will never give altogether. This distortion will blaze not fade. And newness will leak out in between verse / bridge / chorus in feedback leaking like new senses through the gaps in three monkeys.

Brass? Suspension of belief. How much was this 'of its time'? How much of the past is keeping Daydream alive? Is it solid enough to have components? Can you measure it?

Nowhere near. Blink and its gone so - new navigation through new eyes. Zone out, run and beat.

These words? Work it through; start to finish. You can... all's in order. Track it, expected.

"Routine..."

"Workout...

...A whining voice...

"For a...

...teenage hero?

"Past."

Kick it! I last this long, 'til Kim says and I do, knowing that in 30 seconds I can expect that suspension of belief to break.

"It's 1963..."

"It's 1977..."

"It's 2006."

Snap.

Out the doors, out into it. I loved things the way they were too much to make them normal.

And so, "Joni", now we should really stop the clocks.

Photograph by shot2bits.net