Suburban War: All My Friends, I Love You

I've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks thinking about when I was younger. Music has been my pathway to writing about times I haven't allowed myself to visit much because there's pain inherent in craning my neck to look backwards. I finally got out all my old pictures (as you can see on Facebook!) and looked at them with smiles, and not absolute sadness. I find myself owing The Joshua Tree and Grace all over again (and a few other things that I think I'll finally be able to write about after this post). 

I'm a fairly reflective person, but the reality is that when I look at the past I focus on my mistakes, so my desire is to look ahead, plan how to avoid future errors when I should be examining the things in my past that were good and right.

"You said the past won’t rest
Until we jump the fence and leave it behind"

I find that I've lost people along the way to the present, lost their names, lost their faces, lost my connection like a fuzzy radio signal. Looking at these pictures, I think, "why didn't I spend more time getting to know these beautiful people?" I discover that I've dug a big old hole in the back yard of my heart and buried the bones of memories, but now they're more present, more welcome than ever.

What footsteps did I take in the dark that I can finally look my memories in the eyes again?

"They keep erasing all the streets we grew up in."

"Suburban War" has been traveling with me, recalling to me things I felt when I returned home from Lewis & Clark after my freshman year. Things I feel now.

"With my old friends I can remember when

You cut your hair, I never saw you again

Now the cities we live in could be distant stars

And I search for you in every passing car"

Today I remembered an (unfinished) poem from 2001 that parallels aspects of "Suburban War".

Living in Two Places

 

I guess the weirdest thing

Is always seeing faces

From the city I’m not in

On the bodies of strangers,

Phantoms of relation.

Location is a trench

Dug right through the middle of me;

Shadows of shapes pour down my concave skin

Like rainwater gathering in a pool of reflection

Slick-bottomed, still,

In the heart of me.

I was thinking that maybe this feeling is regret for things left undone, but it isn't so. This feeling is not regret, it is love, it is space and time separating us from each other. Do you feel it, too?

"All my old friends they don’t know me now

All my old friends are staring through me now

All my old friends they don’t know me now

All my old friends they don’t know me now

They don’t know me now

All my old friends, wait…"

Maybe we all just want to say, "Friend, I miss you.

I love you.

I'm looking for you everywhere I go. Will I have the courage to reach out to you when I see you again?"