To Return (A Car Ride, A Selection)
On the last day of fall break I drove back to campus, a friend riding shotgun, our joint Spotify playlist shivering on the stereo. Outside it was raining but it felt sunny in that car, full of the warmth of coming home. I’d spent Thanksgiving away from my family for years now, with my chosen family instead. The playlist sang of the sparks of romance but more than that of abundance, regaining our rightful place, both sobering and startling.
Now, as I look forward and backward and try to understand how we got here, I’m wishing fervently for that feeling of return. I mean in part to normalcy, but more precisely to hope, a time when everything wasn’t shuttered and bleak in COVID. These are the songs from that car ride, that Spotify playlist, that I keep slipping through in daydreams. The soundtrack to the possibility of return.
“Circles” by Steve Benjamins
Benjamins’ soft vocals wash into piano, bringing me down to memory. The song tosses pebbles that ripple the past tense: “dance of time, violence of life / it splashes in her deep lake mind”. As the narrative progresses we learn that it recalls an angel banished from heaven. This is a being who has lost her home and now must do her best to situate herself in a world she doesn’t recognize. In her abandonment she must find a freedom, though her wings are gone, though the past weighs her down: “you may think you owe a debt / but no one else is holding it / called you bastard, called you child / I’m sorry / I am sorry”. Benjamins’ voice crescendos in this chorus, reaching out desperate and forgiven to the angel. To gain true freedom, she must craft her own lift of return from the reality of the present.
“New Light” by John Mayer
This song, though colored by regrets and secrets as it has become for me since the car ride, has nevertheless always rung to the tune of bright eyes and second chances. “If you give me just one night / you’re gonna see me in a new light / if you give me just one night / to meet you underneath the moonlight,” Mayer croons, promising his lover the world in a broad and gentle dusk. The earnestness of the lyrics is disarming enough, but the rhythm speaks a groove into desire, a coasting, a revelling. As the song slips into a guitar solo I find myself living inside the upbeat hope of return—return to what, I’m not sure, or even how I’ll get there. All I know is it’s new and warm, confident and soothing: “we can go far from the end / and make a new world together, baby”.
“Island in the Sun” by Weezer
My home-song for every walk, every drive, the song that keeps me moving, my summer song. A space that exists without pressure to analyze or overthink: “you can’t find the words to say / all the things that come to you / and I wanna feel it too”. “Island in the Sun” is a sweet escape where the sun shows no tainted memories, where my mind quiets for three and a half minutes. But as much as it’s about running away from a reality too horrible to bear, it’s also about the small freedoms we’ve managed to keep or return to: a walk into the horizon, a drive with the bass coiling through our bones.
“Skin” by Dijon
Intimate and raw, hooking me without fail from the very beginning, this song pulses into itself: “you’re dressing like a Sunday morning / and your eyes look like little islands in the light”. With terrifying tenderness Dijon invites listeners into the rituals of a shared life, singing us through Sunday morning, Friday night, the evening. Here is the space two lovers make as they return to one another in bed, the one place they can truly “come alive”. Until the possibilities of physical intimacy return, I drift in this stunning sonic landscape, eyes closed and seeing only tomorrow.
“Couch Potato” by Jakubi
It’s difficult not to dance embarrassingly and unapologetically to “Couch Potato”. This is a song entirely aware of and entirely at ease with itself: about breaking free, about throwing obligations and reservations out the window, about taking control without being left behind, about standing up, about trusting yourself before all else. It celebrates the inimitable joy of surrounding yourself with people who find you the most beautiful when living on your own terms: “he loves what she does / when she does what she loves”. After our time away, none of us will be the same in our return to friendships, offices, schools, relationships. Jakubi tells us it’s okay to take this odd interim time to lounge, find a place to feel ready on our own terms—and maybe most importantly, to curate the company that allows us room to adjust.
“Here I Found/No Self Control” by Billy Lemos
I first heard this song not in isolation but in the shower, on shuffle. It was the kind of happy accident that would become a lifeline. Now, in quarantine, I come back again and again to Lemos’ constant questioning of form: a beginning in simple piano chords, unadorned vocals, the clinking of dishes, before suddenly the structure collapses in on itself and begins again, rebuilding somewhere and something entirely new. The refrain runs “here I found / the feeling long forgotten / as I’m older than now / the feeling un-communicated”. Then a scratching transition and a sped-up re-utterance. The song eases itself out sporadically, frenetically: no self control. It revolves around the feeling un-communicated, ever twisting, ever desperate to see itself and its surroundings from each possible angle.
A few weeks ago on a walk, an older couple with a dog blocked my way forward on the pavement. Eventually they stepped to the side, the woman oh don’t worry-ing me past, promising me their dog stopped so often to sniff that it would be quicker for us both if I overtook them. As we spoke she was careful to keep the appropriate social distance, a quiet assurance that she wouldn’t harm me. Of course I’ve lived this scene a million times pre-pandemic, yet the moment now masked an undercurrent, the same one that rushes beneath every interaction these days. How exactly do we hold our distance while also holding the truth of others’ shared humanity? How do we reach out and still remain safe? We pull back, hands raised but face open. No matter how we return from this, we must navigate the gap between what we say and what we mean, how we at once grasp for the people we love and stay six feet away from them, rain outside the car and sunshine inside, a feeling un-communicated.