“Speed Trap”
(song written on June 30 but published to Patreon on July 8)
Gee whiz, am I behind! Thanks for being all sweet and patient you guys.
Honestly, I’ve had the track ready to go but REALLY didn’t feel comfortable sharing the original recording. I don’t mind sharing RAW weird recordings with you guys but this one was so bad, it was pretty embarrassing. I finally got around to retracking it and it is a little bit better. BUT - that is why there was more of a delay than usual.
Whenever holidays approach, I tend to "time-travel" in my daydreaming and see how many of each of those I can remember, which images I can wring out of the past. It's a nice marker of the time passing, but a bittersweet one. Fourth of July, for some reason, always leaves me more sad than the others.
Holidays in general are tough - families gathered together, laughing, catching up. With my family relationships strained, I've happily built my own little nucleus with Ed and the dogs, but he, and all my friends, have their own units to check in with, to go back to, to belong to.
I have a few memories that are ok of the Fourth. Sparklers in the park, my mom making me a red-white-and-blue hair bow out of ribbons we purchased on a trip together to Michaels (my favorite store then, and arguably now), watching “sky-bulbs” in Richmond, VA with the guys - legs swinging out of the back of a van in the middle of my first tour. But I also remember lonely Fourths, hot-&-sad Fourths, away-from-home Fourths, woops-I-got-too-drunk Fourths.
My Dad's favorite holiday is the Fourth of July, I suppose it reminds him, ironically, of happy childhood times growing up in a big family. Gobs of friends and coworkers and family members would crowd around our home for those few years I lived there for each big annual July 4th party- drinking, swimming, making merry. I mostly stayed in my room - it was more of an adult thing. I didn't quite fit in. I was a buzzkill.
Especially with dogs now that are scared of loud noises, Fourth of July is little more than a nice excuse for a day off, on which Ed (if he is home and not out gigging) and I are cradling the shivering pups in the tub. I'll peek out onto the street or whatever vantage point I might have from wherever I'm living at the time, and see other small groups laughing, drinking beer in lawn chairs from their concrete driveways, setting off Roman candles and running away giddily before they erupt. It's hard to explain, but I experience this twinge of sadness, a longing, a nostalgia- for nothing.
Perhaps these observations, marked by my own rolodex-of-memory flipping, makes me feel a little more aware of my own mortality - how quickly things go, how fleeting life is - how we have one orgastic moment of beauty and then the flame flickers out. Some would argue we are lucky if we don’t have to watch the ember fall to the cold ground.
A bit sombre of a perspective regarding a holiday I know so many really enjoy. But that’s just me and my story, my M.O.
I was pondering this and kept thinking about one of my musical heroes, Elliott Smith, and his song “Roman Candle,” which I love. I was inspired to write something of that ilk, perhaps for One Big Dark Room, and am pretty pleased with the result. It felt good to write this kind of song again - a little angry, a little hopeless. It’s different from most of what I’ve been churning out lately so it was nice to flip myself over and take a real look at the other side.
Until we meet again?
Lex
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