Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 5:25 PM
The above title is from a song written by singer/songwriter Ben Folds, whom I’m only familiar with in passing. I try to keep my mind open when it comes to music, and will occasionally sample artists because I read or saw something interesting about them that got my attention. In this song he says; “now I’m floating away, and haunting the halls night and day, out in some storage space out on the highway.” That last line is what got to me. How much more desolate can one be, out in some storage space out on the highway? The song is about lost love, but damn, to me that line drives it home, that sense of loss and isolation!
It made me go back into my own years, searching to see if I was ever that alone, isolated, desolate. It made me think of my friends and acquaintances and family members, if I missed something in them that I could have helped to change with a kind word or advice, or by just taking the time to listen to them. I believe that sometimes we’re so caught up in our own world, our own thoughts and longings, that we miss so much. In some cases we can pull back and look at ourselves and our lives and say, ‘whoa! Come back home, Charlie Brown!’
Those of us who are able to do that are the lucky ones. What about our family and friends and people in general who have no brakes? That when that depression or hopelessness and isolation creeps into the mind, they can’t just say, whoa? They let themselves get lost in that maze of an unhealthy existence because they find relief in the pain. I know it sounds crazy, but I speak from personal experience, not only my own, but from those of family and friends who have felt overwhelmed by life.
You turn on the news or read a paper or your favorite website, and it’s war and murder and toxic politics and hate and destruction and chaos and mayhem and AI and racism and selfishness and cruelty and “whoa” doesn’t help anymore! If you are older, you can’t absorb all the frenetic energy that surrounds you. If you are younger, you marvel at the fast pace of life, but you accept it and can cope, and are maybe even excited by it.
I have said this over and over: in my opinion we have to find our place, our space, in nature, in the things that make life bearable for us and those we care about, which should be humanity as a whole. Sometimes there are no roadmaps guiding us; sometimes we have to just get there on the fly; but we must get there, we don’t have a choice, in my opinion. Life is hard, really hard for some people, and sometimes that storage space out on the highway is our only refuge. How sad is that?
“I could not see the haze back in the day
When we lived inside of it
Now I’m floating away
And haunting the halls night and day
Out in some storage space out on the highway.”
Ben Folds…. What matters most
Glen