an imaginary futurE
I wrote most of the words for ‘Amsterdam’ two years ago in my bedroom at the music house known as Archy’s Bunker. It came about as an exercise in conjuring place. The lyrics “smoking loose leaf, watch the boats cut summer ice” and “a small flock of parakeets buzz through the trees” are both direct observations pulled from a pocket-sized staff paper lined notebook. Years back I went to the Netherlands and wondered in a wide-open-world way what it might take to actually live there as an ex-pat with an ex. Drunk on possibility and real wine.
This relationship would continue tumultuously throughout the decade and end in a dramatic fashion within the pressurized environment of a house full of rescue dogs, tequila, and yawning resentment in a corona-stricken Seattle. Back when we went to Amsterdam, fresh-faced and bright-eyed, the dark future could only be guessed at.
The lyrics for ‘Amsterdam’ are a snapshot of this dead spark. Before we knew it could die. Art and beauty, naivety and the imaginary future. The city itself, the city you dreamed, the city she dreamed, etc. Letting go of the lost world of that early love before we smashed the champagne bottle on the side of the shed and lit bottle rockets with our poorly-rolled cigarettes in the cool June air. Church bells hammered Belgian beers past the blood brain barrier.
I was in the habit of writing mean-spirited songs full of bitterness and heavy detail as a form of quasi-therapeutic rant. They were becoming hard to want to sing. ‘Amsterdam’ represented a shift in my recovery from that low place. I was able to come at this with a more brisk form of forgiveness and a softer form of vulnerability. Simply noticing the thoughts and the feelings as they come about. Observations of place. I still don’t know what ripples through me when I sing “it’s happening without you, man” but I know it feels critical to accept this as a truth like a river flowing. Waves always crashing on a shore, forever. The tulips waving like pink fists in rows toward the horizon, below sea level. Creaking of windmills. Her and I and the fountain of youth kicked into the canal outside of a rainy cobblestone path glowing with red neon XXX signs.
I wrote this song as an acceptance of the truth of noticing I was once alive there with that woman in that place with those dreams. I was once alive there sloppy drunk and spinning within the overwhelming rainbow blur of a European city during Pride. The city was left alone to flourish in a passionate party scene, and we danced there across the bridge into the past, delirious with love and chocolate and room temp prosecco. Our debauchery held us there suspended like a renaissance painting before we knew for certain that that world had ended, was ending, will end. And still the incongruous little green birds in the trees.
