lyrics

I admit it. I'm a definite fangirl where Josh Ritter is concerned. I can thank Adam for turning me on to his music. There's something in his manner of storytelling — literate, thoughtful, playful, emotional — that delights me every time a new album comes out.

His songs aren't immediate, ferocious loves. They're albums you play several times as you absorb the melody, waiting for the full import to sink in, and then eventually there's a moment when the sense of what I'm hearing seeps in, and I hit 'repeat.' A few months later I realize the songs have slowly, gradually, seeped into the soundtrack of my life.

Thirteen years later, I keep waiting for a world in which Kevin Gilbert’s lyrics don’t apply.

Look at them now, drawing little lines with their speeches
Each daring the other to cross
It won’t be long now cause one will make a stand he believes in
Believing it’s well worth the cost
Then the other gets angry, refuses to budge
Fueled by some understandable grudge
And now we wait quietly till the missile arrives
There’s no need to shout about the end of our lives

Sure, it’s about nuclear war, but…

So turn the radio up and pass the bottle round
And then we’ll have one more drink before we all fall down
I’ll wear my favorite tie, you can wear your wedding gown
And then we’ll both look real sharp when we all fall down

I’ve had Talking Heads in, well, my head for most of the week. I started the trip with “Once In A Lifetime” and sang along until I had most of it.

“And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?”
— Talking Heads

South and east, I think, past the sprawl and congestion of Atlanta to the sprawl and congestion of yet another place, but one that has something I haven’t seen in quite some time. Ocean.

Into the blue again, indeed.

“Well, I think about friends in the back of my mind
Are they still just kids frozen in time
The mirror won’t lie as the days fly by
Are they all no better off than I?”

The incantation remains the same:

Memory, leave me something - I lose so much on a daily basis; give me this, on days when I was happy, for the days that will inevitably come when I am not, so that I may remember the taste of these moments that, inevitably, go…
— 'Rockies on my right,' 10 October 2004

Any other day, I would have said that this day did not go as planned, but in truth, we had few plans; just notes and directions scribbled down in a notebook, hopefully enough to get through the day. Denver was supposed to be Saturday, but Chris came down with a bug. Instead, I watched television, made food, and gamed with Jake while Chris slept off the worst of it with NyQuil.

Play me a groove
one for my radio
one for my love that came and went
So many stories -
hey man i’m sorry, Joe -
this is just a song to pay the rent
- Angie Aparo, “Spaceship”

Three weeks away made my home a stranger to myself. I walked back in and there was everything, exactly where I left it, my life exactly where I left it, and it took me a day or so to realize that I was what had changed. I was the unfitting piece in the mostly-complete puzzle.