We'll take the trail marked on your father's map.
Ah, yes. That takes me back. Right back. Right back to that time...that never was.
Oh, I've taken trails. But none I can recall that were marked on paternal maps. And yet, somehow, for some reason, it doesn't matter—this song takes me back anyway.
Perhaps it's the books and movies of my formative years—The Goonies and The Princess Bride, The Famous Five and The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a bunch of others that don't even start with 'The'—all merging with my real-life recollections to form some kind of memory mash-up, a neural concoction conjuring up a heady dose of music-induced déjà vu.
I don't know. But whatever the reason, this song manages to achieve that most enchanting and elusive of feats, in invoking the bittersweet haze of nostalgia and the warm afterglow of fond recollection—all for a history that never was.
It might be the imagery—the milky twilights and the moonlit floors, the fireflies dancing beneath the silver moon—or maybe it's the jangly 90s guitars, for which I was and am and always will be a sucker.
Or perhaps it's simply the near-perfect call-back to those long adolescent evenings of school dances and secret rendezvous, of broken curfews and clandestine crushes, of the time when a simple kiss could be the sum total of desire, a thing complete and entire unto itself.
I know it's sappy, I'm all too aware of its unfortunate and unshakable association with Dawson's Creek and I realise I may well have more Y chromosomes than the average Sixpence None the Richer fan.
But if this song is on the radio, I will listen to it. If it comes up in a playlist, I won't skip it. And if ever I see a hanging tyre, I'll probably swing on it.
YOU ARE READING
Regarding Some Songs
Non-FictionSome songs you love. Some songs you hate. Some songs you wonder from which bizarre and occasionally regrettable confluence of pharmacology and frontal lobes they sprang forth. Songs quite literally form the soundtracks to our lives, the backing t...
