Leaving Songs

Four days. In four days, I will be in a jet somewhere over the Atlantic, returning to Edinburgh. Four days until tea and biscuits, dreich and haars, taking the piss, local bands and  local whisky. Four days until Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, freshair.org.uk, Edinburgh University’s history department. Four days until I’m back in the first place that I could feel loving me back as I loved it.

But it also means four more days in California. Four days of living in the place where I am from, where my family is, where I rediscovered my old life in Berkeley, gaining new appreciation for past good things and adding in new ones: new friends, new hangouts, even new small joys, like sitting on the lawn in front of California Hall in the sun writing essays. Four days of golden hills studded with dusty blue-green oaks, four days of looking ever awestruck out the BART window across the bay to the City. Four days of last meals, last drinks. Four days of long, hard hugs, fierce promises to keep in touch, write, Skype.

Four days from now, I’ll hug my parents goodbye and walk away into the airport, alone. Someday, soon, I want someone to be walking away with me. But until then, I’ll make my way to the departure gate, put in my headphones, and listen to music, especially You and Me by the Walkmen. The album is all about going and being far away from home (wherever or whoever that is), but it’s this particular song that has caught me in the past week or so. The last time I heard it live, I teared up from a combination of awe at its beauty and empathy with its subject. The voice, the guitar, and the words carry everything; the loneliness of the leaving, the excitement of the future, all of the hard and tender love and the loss that naturally goes with it. Just as “Little House of Savages” helped me leave Edinburgh on a long, whisky-heavy night a year ago, I hope “New Country” will help me find my way back.

Advertisement