My friends and I love Avatar: The Last Airbender, so when a friend shared an album inspired by it today I didn’t think much of it. It was a downbeat/chill album of a half dozen tracks and I idly sampled them. I hit the first track for a few seconds and decided I would buy it, but first I noticed one of the tracks, “Leaves from the Vine”, was most popular by far.

It’s been a couple years since I watched the series so the title didn’t ring a bell. I started the preview as I flipped back to the chat where the album had been recommended. In a matter of a few notes, I felt strangely sad. It’s a melancholy, soulful song, but as a few more seconds went by I found myself replying in chat:

this is crushing my soul
I’m dying
help

I was being dramatic but it earnestly felt that way; the song was instantly making me impossibly sad. And then it connected: This is Iroh’s song about the loss of his son. And I just broke down and cried all over my laptop. I felt like I’d been emotionally sucker punched before I could brace for it, caught utterly off-guard. It felt like an eternity passed in the span of a song preview.

That was enough for today.