Outside of flipping stuff on eBay (and often alongside it), I really like listening to music. I know, have you ever met someone who doesn’t enjoy at least some aspect of music? Like pretty much everyone ever, I form some pretty strong emotional bonds with special songs, and Ragnarok by Periphery is one of them.

Honestly, Periphery II just slaps. I was admittedly late to the game and only really knew Scarlet, but I had a selection of Periphery songs downloaded on my phone and was bound to run into Ragnarok at some point.

I used to throw together a huge annual eBay Christmas sale back when I was primarily focused on Lego. From like July through November, I was non-stop buying Lego lots like a kid who stole his mom’s credit card. And since I was off at school, I’d come home every few weekends to a mountain of packages, kind of like my own mini Christmas, and spend the better part of my time home cataloging sets and sorting out mismatched minifigures.

In December 2017, my senior year of college, I was dealing with some pretty moderate volume for a one-man show (like a couple thousand minifigures, easily over 100 sets, and tons of bulk Lego). I had poured loads of time into buying, inventorying, piecing together, divvying up, and listing my Christmas haul in between finals and wrapping up senior projects.

This prep work stretched over over multiple months, but it always caught up with me on one day: the end date for all of my listings. My buyers usually paid on time, so I’d find myself with hundreds of orders to fill within the next business day.

I watched the auctions end all day and tried to proactively fill orders, but it wasn’t setting me that much ahead. So I waited until around 8pm when all had sold and got to work, running around the back room of my parents’ basement hunting for the right minifigs and such.

I ran out of packaging tape around 1am, so I trudged outside and spent 15 minutes scraping the ice off my car to drive to Walmart. Since I was there, I also grabbed a pack of Reeses Trees (treeses) to help get me through the rest of night.

Everyone was asleep when I got back home, so I headed back down into the basement, put my phone on shuffle, polished off some treeses, and got back to it.

That’s when Ragnarok started to play.

I’m sure the peanut butter-chocolate combo played a part in it, but I got amped. The chuggy riffs kept me moving and matched my rhythm as I was filling up bubble mailers. I honestly don’t remember much of my reaction to the bulk of the song since I was so in the zone. It wasn’t until I listened to it again that I really learned to appreciate the incredible vocals, the blood-pumping pace, the kind of doomy feeling. But in the moment, I just took it in and nearly fractured my neck as I was head banging to the outro.

Then the ambience (I thought it was silence) after the song hit. I downloaded most of my music like a pleb from YouTube to MP3, so it was pretty common to have silence or jingles or whatever at either end of the track. I left the room and figured that the next song would come on as I was grabbing more bubble wrap.

The interlude came in softly like a lullaby and caught me completely off guard. I didn’t remember having anything like it in my playlist and would never have guessed that it was part of the same song. I kind of crept back into the room to see who it was, skeptical that it was even a part of my playlist. The song was just playing from my tiny iPhone 5C, but the melody felt like it filled the room. I sat down and listened through until the end.

I’m not sure what it was that captivated me, but it was so grounding and calming. I was feeling frustrated and overtired, so Ragnarok helped me punch out the rage a little bit. But that interlude was just like a warm, reassuring hug.

Listening to it now just transports me back. Sitting in the crowded basement with the smell of carboard and treeses in the air. Stressing about what my next step was going to be but also anxious to get out of college. Not sure if I’d be able to fill all of the orders in time. My worries were so contained and I hadn’t gotten a full taste of the real world yet. It’s so bittersweet — light and airy, but filled with melancholy and longing. I don’t know how, but it makes me feel weightless and heavy at the same time. Like maybe if I listen to it enough times, I’ll close my eyes and wake up back in the basement when school and eBay orders were the biggest things I had to worry about.

I think I called it a night around 5am and got a few hours of sleep before round 2 the next day. I knocked out all of the orders and included way more Periphery in the mix.

Ragnarok is one of those songs I never skip, and it’s honestly because of the interlude. Don’t get me wrong, I jam to the song itself, but it’s always with anticipation of the interlude. They’re such a polarizing, nostalgic pair.

I haven’t done a Lego Christmas extravaganza anywhere near that magnitude since then, I mean I feel like I would be chasing what once was. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to feel exactly the same as I did when the Ragnarok interlude first brought me to tears, but I’m grateful for the memories of simpler times that it triggers.