Summer Song Challenge, Day 99: Joe

Prompt: "A song about endings"

Selected by Joe

"I Must Belong Somewhere"

Bright Eyes

Cassadaga, 2007

I find myself returning to this song during life's various transitions and changes and, most pointedly here, its endings. It's a sort of wish-fulfillment, how the narrator takes a look around, and realizes that the place that he's in is the place that he wants to be. It's where he wants to stay. The irony is that, by the time he realizes it, it's already too late, and there's nothing he can do about it. All good things come to an end.

 

I know that these so-called "summer projects" that I cook up on the blog are some limp-dick attempt at pretending that summers are exactly the way they used to be in my youth—magical and free. Used to be that I'd party every day, and the subconscious thinking was that if I could do something else every day during this current summer, something fun and something creative and something that also involved my friends, that I could make a sincere grab at the emotions that used to come naturally, all so many years ago. Not sure if other people think we got there, but I'd like to think so. Summer Song Challenge occasionally felt like an arduous challenge, but standing here on Labor Day, there's a sense of accomplishment too, that we did something here, that we had fun and spent time together in this digital space, that maybe this summer found some semblance of the summers of yore.

There is very little that remains to be said that I haven't shouted out you over the past 99 days. You know how much I love doing this shit. You know how thankful I am that you came along for the ride. You know that tomorrow I'm going to feel a certain sense of emptiness that no amount of First Day of School jitters are going to paper over. You know that this is sad as fuck, the fact that our summer is coming to a close.

But everything, it must belong somewhere. I know that now. That's why I'm staying here. (You can too, if you want.)