song -Jackson Browne from Late for the sky

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you
There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more,
But they didn't show your spirit quite as true.

This song is actually two different songs I think. One is a typical wistful nostalgic kind of piece. An ode to an old love, and the looking back we all do to someone we knew well, or thought we knew well.


You were turning 'round to see who was behind you,
And I took your childish laughter by surprise
And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes.

The second part of the song is more about growing old, in the general sense. How we see our lives so much differently in retrospect.


Now the things that I remember seem so distant and so small,
Though it hasn't really been that long a time
What I was seeing wasn't what was happening at all
Although for a while, our path did seem to climb...

...and while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it seems
It would be easier sometimes
to change the past


I think this song has stayed with me for all these years because it speaks to both types of nostalgia: Missing how things were with a lover or close friend (sometimes both, right?) and how we imagine our youth. The fact that both types of memories are distorted doesn't make looking back any harder.


I hope my friends, both new and old, have fond memories of our times together, whether real or imagined. Virtual or otherwise.

I'm just one or two years and a couple of changes
behind you
In my lessons at love's pain and heartache school
Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light
You've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight
You've had to hide sometimes but now you're all right
And it's good to see your smiling face tonight


for dannye