Jessai Flores

“Come and pick me up from the parking lot

‘Cause I took too much of your pure dedication”

It was a cool night in October 2023. I was, for all intents and purposes, the only one of my friends who could drive, so I was taking two friends to a Two Set Violins concert. Said friends decided that, due to my “bad” music taste, I had lost the right to play music in my own car and earned their nearly unceasing aural torture for the duration of the trip. While I navigated the famously unpleasant downtown LA freeways, I was treated to such gems as the “Soviet Anthem (Techno Remix),” “Potkulaudalla Pariisiin” by Haloo Helsinki! and, to my particular dismay, “Two Trucks” by Lemon Demon.

To insulate me against this barrage, the more humane of my two passengers used the aux privileges, which I had so naively bestowed upon both friends at the trip’s outset, to dose me with “KPR” by Yumi Zouma every half hour or so. When I heard the opening strums and accompanying pulsing — I do not speak music — heralding the song’s return, I felt myself breathe a little easier. Finally, a three-minute reprieve. A little “KPR” as a treat.

“A fading star to a burnt out car

Did you drive too fast ’cause you needed attention?”

Even under such dire driving conditions, I did my best to maintain a safe road environment at all times. Me? Speed? Never.

“I don’t know why you feel lost inside”

What a random lyric that I don’t relate to in the least! Incidentally, I don’t know how I heard of this band in the first place. I only listened to “KPR,” an absolute banger that comes in both standard and “redux” versions — the latter of which is deliciously haunting — after first becoming a general fan of Yumi Zouma’s music. I am generally spoonfed most of my music by Apple Music’s “Made for You” playlist, so the algorithm is probably responsible for this.

“But I’ve lost my mind and I’m sick of pretending

You’d die for me, ’cause I’m so damn weak

Walking down your street, and I’m sick of the ending”

The aforementioned merciful friend bestowed further “KPR”-related blessings upon me throughout our senior year of high school, following the Two Set Violins incident. For simplicity and anonymity’s sake, I will refer to her as K, short for “KPR” and definitely not short for anything else. 

When I got rejected from University of [censored] [censored], a school that I had nepotistically assumed I would get into since it’s where my parents met and where my dad earned a total of four graduate degrees, K was there. Though I wasn’t acutely disappointed in the way I might have been if, for example, UC [censored] were to have rejected me, K still paid attention to me, watched to see how I was feeling, and did what she could to cheer me up. My main reaction was just, “I need to pee.” So we both did, sitting in adjacent bathroom stalls. Suddenly I heard the opening riffs of “KPR.” 

It’s not a cheery song, but I couldn’t help but smile at the, let’s say, situational humor — first and last time someone has tried that trick on me in a bathroom.

K also gave me a vinyl of “Present Tense,” the vinyl that “KPR” appears on, for my eighteenth birthday. Did I have a record player? No. But was it a beautiful and thoughtful gift that made me feel valued and loved and impressed and a whole slate of other positive emotions? Certainly, yes.

“Thinking of you as I fumble to change the song

‘Cause it sounds too much like the nights I’m reminded of”

All of these memories feel slightly bittersweet now that I’m far away from my high school friends — I would happily withstand whatever they chose to put on the radio, even if they went back to playing Grimes, in exchange for one more night driving them down the freeway into LA and watching the city lights grow brighter as the sun goes down.

But it’s not quite like the song says — I don’t mind being reminded of these happy times, of course, even if they’re gone. I don’t journal as much as I probably should; I don’t take enough photos; I don’t have a very good memory inside my own head. A lot of my memories are in the auxiliary storage of my music library, tagged to songs like this one. I am so lucky that my friends have aided me in weaving a rich tapestry of nostalgia out of “KPR,” with a blunted vignette tied to every lyric, a fleeting strand of emotion wrapped around every note.