as a writer of one- to two-minute songs, I’m not interested in holding on to something for very long, or walking back into the past too deep. I’m in it for the permission to be transient.

it’s like this with singing, too. the whole idea of holding a note is strange to me. singing isn’t about that for me. it’s about passage, about carrying the note out of you and forward.

when I chronicle the past I’m really just connecting dots, picking the terrible and hard and beautiful things out of it and presenting a coherent arc in a neat, little song. of course, it was much noisier than that. the past is merely an alibi for the present.

and the future, well, it’s messy. but it’s better to move on to it, better to leave what’s left behind any way except a slow way, leave the fastest way you can. like the cars flying down the Belt Parkway taking us where we imagine is better than where we are.