For those of you who religiously follow my (consistently riveting) tweets, you saw me offer up this harrowing confession yesterday:

Bizarre sudden onset of painful nostalgia as I research an extinct Epcot ride that I never even rode.

The ride I’m referring to was called Horizons, and it was essentially a futuristic extension of the Carousel of Progress ride located in other Disney parks. It was an ‘80s-era picture of the future—as all of Epcot once was—where riders traveled through various stages of the glorified and scientific progress of humanity out into the far reaches of space. It was all set to a catchy (if powerfully dated) song with the refrain, “If we can dream it, then we can do it…yes we can!”

I stumbled across this ride watching YouTube videos of other extinct Disney park rides (the word “inexplicable” applies to much of this post)—and as I traveled through a past look at the future from the past by way of a poor (and undoubtedly illegal) 1994 video recording, I was caught wholly transfixed.

Despite this being 1) a really lame, low-fi way of experiencing a moving “dark ride,” and 2) the fact that it’s a supremely corny, animatronics-riddled, Disney vision of a utopian future—something deep in the cockles of my heart was stirred, and I developed an insatiable thirst for all things Horizons and the Epcot Center of yore.

I suppose one way to explain this inexplicable nostalgia is my overall love for so many things Disney. I visited the parks both here in Florida and in California several times growing up, and I grew up on a steady diet of their classic animated films. Disney occupies a huge cubby of my childhood.

Many of the rides, especially the older (and cornier) ones, at the park have this sappy, magnetic pull on me. I’m especially endeared to rides and movies that were conceived in the ’80s, which can probably be understood, in part, when you consider that it was the decade in which I was born and spent much of my childhood.

As a film music aficionado, I am also attracted to the unapologetically sentimental quality of the orchestral music that accompanies many of these rides. This is one thing that happily lives on in the parks; great examples being Bruce Broughton’s majestic score for the Spaceship Earth ride and Jerry Goldsmith’s rarified music for Soarin’.

And yet there’s something else here, revolving around the fact that the ride no longer exists and was torn down to make room for a new ride. The animatronic ghosts from that old ride haunt me. I want desperately to travel back in time to 1994, my valuable possessions tucked securely in a fanny pack, and climb aboard the floating space gondolas that revealed prophetic panoramas of tomorrow’s farmers harvesting deserts and oceans, and the family of the future eating dinner around their silver space station table.

For whatever reason, Disney + the 1980s + the irretrievable past = a deep seated, almost painful ache in my heart for a place I can no longer visit. Any psychologists (or Disney-certified sociologists) out there care to explain my plight?

Yesterday I interviewed Polish film composer Jan (Yahn) A.P. Kaczmarek for Film Score Monthly Online. I have been writing for FSMO for two years, and it has been one of the most rewarding, exciting ventures I have ever endeavored upon. FSMO is the parson that married my love of writing and my love of film music; a match surely made in heaven.

It took a few attempts to get through to Maestro Kaczmarek. I was calling a Los Angeles number that connected to a number in Poland, so the few hiccups were excused. The first word out of my mouth, when I finally reached him, was a gaff: “Jan?” He genially said it happens all the time, but it must be annoying to be addressed as “Jan” when your name is pronounced “Yahn.” I tried to compensate for my blunder by inquiring how to pronounce his last name, and what the ‘A’ and ‘P’ stand for (the Polish equivalent of Andrew and Paul, it turns out).

I asked if it was customary for Polanders to include the middle initials of their name; Jan explained that, when he first began his career, there existed another famous Jan Kaczmerak, and the burden of differentiation fell on the young newcomer.

He invited me to visit his new institute, which represents his attempt to unify composers and artists—who tend to be a solitary, fragmented lot—in central Europe. I told him of my love for Polish food, and he said the Instytut Rozbitek will incorporate great Polish food into its holistic structure. That practically bought my plane ticket.

We talked about our love of woodwinds, and their unfortunate absence from modern film music. He claimed the great Ennio Morricone as his idol, and cited The Mission as one of the greatest scores ever written.

Jan spoke with a thick accent, but I had little trouble understanding him. For a non-native English speaker, he was incredibly eloquent and articulate with his word choice and the way he structured his sentences. There was even a kind of beauty in the way he strung his words together, especially as he waxed eloquent about the power of “extracting the essence” of films when he composes.

I was equally impressed with the warmth of personality that was able to traverse continents over phone waves. He told me that he looks forward to meeting me in person someday, and I wholeheartedly agreed.

You can hear Jan’s latest creation in the new Robert Duvall film Get Low.

Thanks to my wife for suggesting this post idea. I plan to offer similar reflections on composers I interview in the future.